Mass Effect: Beyond the Hedge
by Jonathon Oak
Summary: There are worse things than Reapers in those dark, cold, forgotten places between the stars...
1. Spacemen, Memorials and Drinks

"_Shepard!_"

The words were the last thing she heard from Joker as she slammed a fist into the emergency close button, sealing him away from the rest of the crumbling ship as the attacking vessel's laser ripped through the cockpit. Then there was a brief flash and the escape pod shot off into the darkness of space, a red blinking light telling the commander that the emergency beacon was firing. God willing, someone would pick up on it soon.

She had briefly seen his face as the doors sealed shut; panicked, desperate and disbelieving. In the back of her head, something clung to the hope that she would see it again.

Further thoughts were quickly cut off when another explosion ripped from the control panel that the pilot had been sitting at just moments before. This time not even her gripped gloves were enough to keep Shepard's tenuous hold on the _Normandy_ from being broken, the force knocking her into the metal panelling and forcing the air from her lungs. Her arm bent back to a horrific distance and she heard something pop, before she was sent flailing off away from the ship.

Without a sound in the vacuum, the _SS Normandy_ finally exploded with a brief flare of fire, illuminated only by the light reflected off the planet they had been orbiting. All Shepard could see was its bright, icy blue surface and shrapnel from the _Normandy_ falling to its gravity. Like shooting stars they burst into red flame as they broke into the atmosphere.

In this void, Shepard forced herself to remain calm, trying to run her thoughts through basic training to see if her instructors had given any helpful hints as to what to do when vented into space with your ship destroyed and your form slowly falling into a nearby gravity well. Focusing on a mental image of a flame, her consciousness willing it to remain bright in her mind, she was not surprised to find that no one had ever believed that anyone would find themselves in such a position.

Chances are if anyone had asked, they would have given an answer not unlike Shepard's assessment of the situation: Not a snowball's chance in Hell.

While she still had breathing time, Shepard rapidly began looking for something to pull herself out of what was looking to be a very sticky and ignoble end, anything. What exactly she couldn't really think of, but the Commander had been in plenty of situations where she needed to think on her feet with limited resources. That was just the moment where it all came together.

It was strange how calm and serene everything seemed, the great hunks of the _Normandy_ hurtling past her like ships sailing on an invisible sea, turning a cherry red one by one as they entered Alchera's atmosphere. It was almost beautiful.

All she could hear was her own forcefully measured breathing and the pump of the oxygen tank. And also a strange hissing…then an alarm from her armour's inbuilt computer.

_A leak_.

Immediately Shepard went into action; trying to fix the problem before it was too late. She hadn't any time as it was; she didn't need a lack of oxygen to add to things.

Flailing behind her with her good arm, Shepard found herself trying to block it off, to grab her air tubes and…do what? She couldn't seal it with her finger, not forever anyway.

_Dammit…_

She felt the atmosphere in her suit drop.

A cool VI voice suddenly sounded in her ear, strangely muted, "Warning: Suit breach detected. Internal atmosphere reaching 0.7 atmos. Self-repair functions offline. Oxygen levels critical. Warning: Suit breach detected. Internal atmosphere…"

_Dammit all…not like this. Not now…_

Her next gasp was harder. It wasn't just that there was bad air; there was increasingly little to breathe in.

_There's too much left…please, don't let it be now…_

Then her lungs found nothing at all.

Becoming quickly light headed, Shepard was vaguely aware of her legs kicking desperately, of her hand coming to her throat, as though trying to keep what little oxygen she had left in her. There was a deep pain in her chest as her diaphragm strained and her heart heaved and pumped wildly. Her vision beheld the planet Alchera, its icy surface strangely cold, beautiful and utterly alien. It was getting closer. She must be being drawn in by its gravity…where she will be burnt up upon entry and smashed like a water balloon onto its surface.

_Mother…Kaiden…David…I'm so sorry…I've failed…_

Her mind and her vision started to blurr and then slowly blank. The VI's voice was muffled into silence and there was nothing. For a moment Shepard existed in a state of complete oblivion, like that spot between sleep and dreaming.

Then a strange, childish giggling.

_Ah_, Shepard thought, surprised she could still think at all. _My brain must be starved of oxygen…starting to hallucinate…hearing voices…_

It grew louder, and there was something unsettling about it. The way it echoed, the way it sounded. Was that music too?

"_Little floating spaceman, floating in the dark, Your spaceman friends have left you, your ship is blown apart…_"

Hazily, in the depths of her oxygen deprived brain, something found strength to question. _What the Hell?_

"_Little floating spaceman, no planets you will find, Another ship has found you, and that ship is mine…"_

)O(

Mournful, solo and piercing, a trumpet sounded the Last March and Admiral Hackett of the 5th Fleet, dressed in his finest and with enough medals on him to patch up a hull breach, swept his hand up sharply in a salute. Like a great piece of machinery, well oiled and precise, the hall did the same. Even those not of the Alliance military, or any military at all for matter, did something to give their respects. With that, the trumpet sung its dirge into the echoing chamber of the Citadel Council.

The admiral stood on a stage before a large holographic image of Commander Jane Shepard receiving her honours for her part in the Battle of the Citadel and the destruction of the ship referred to as Sovereign. Fragments of the colossal vessel still littered the Council Chamber where she stood, indeed they were still there now. The Council had insisted that it was a ship of geth manufacture, despite Shepard's constant protest to the contrary, something that had quickly turned her into an embarrassment for the Alliance. This image gradually transitioned into another photo of the whole of Normandy's crew assembled just beside the ship itself, taken shortly before her maiden flight. Then into a picture of Shepard, bloodied and battle-scarred yet nevertheless wearing a broad, triumphant grin, standing in front of an equally battered statue that stood in the centre of Elysium's capital garden. This, in turn, faded into another picture, then another in an unending loop.

To either side of the stage were Alliance flags, plus the colonial or national flags of every crewmember who served aboard the Normandy. Included were the flags of the Turian Hierarchy, the Asari Republics, the Quarian Flotilla and a hastily-made flag bearing the symbol of Clan Urdnot, since Tuchanka had no recognised unified government.

The final flag almost didn't make it, but pressure from the rest of the crew ensured that Wrex was represented. The krogan himself was absent, but to the crew that mattered little. He probably would have been amused at his clan's symbol appearing, perhaps for the first time in its history, so neatly and almost professionally sewn on a flag by asari artisans. Hanging with the others, it almost looked civil. Almost.

Shortly behind Hackett, Captain Anderson and a myriad of other officers and officials, including Ambassador Udina wearing whatever expression would cause the least political backlash. Amongst these, Captain Hannah Shepard bore a face of pride despite the tears, her salute the crispest. Everyone agreed: no mother could expect a finer daughter. Tears streamed down her cheeks and she displayed them shamelessly, defying those tears with a smile at the System Alliance flag as it lowered to half-mast. Her salute was the last to drop.

No mother could expect a finer daughter.

All in all, it had been a short but simple multi-faith ceremony, with few long-winded speeches but plenty of feeling. The atmosphere in the room swelled with each moment, the past destruction of the Citadel ignored as nearly the whole station paid tribute to the galaxy's heroine and to the crew that served under her. Except for those, of course, who had reason to celebrate, but they wisely kept out of sight.

There was no doubt about it, it was a ceremony Shepard…Jane would have approved of.

Kaiden Alenko felt a little self-conscious up on stage, along with the rest of Shepard's old crew. The Normandy's old crew, barring a few notable exceptions.

Many were still bearing marks from the ship's destruction; lost hair, scars, burns. One had lost an eye when a control panel went up, whilst another had been left paralysed from the waist down until the spinal injury could be treated. They stood up there all the same, with all the pride an Alliance Navy crewman who had served in the line of duty deserved. Those who could stood, and those who didn't looked envious of the former.

A few other wreaths were present alongside the one for Shepard, there to honour those who also fell in the line of duty. Their absence was as keenly felt among the crew as Shepard's. Ash was being honoured here as well, although she had already been given a ceremony just a month before the Normandy's last flight. She was still a part of the Normandy crew, after all.

Jane would have wanted nothing less.

Himself, Kaiden got away from the attack relatively unscathed. He had been wearing armour and his shields were up at the time of the attack, which helped protect him from the flying shrapnel. It certainly helped that most the major injuries came from those who had been in the engineering deck, which was hit the hardest and had more things prone to exploding. Even so, those facts still didn't stop him from thinking that he had cheated somehow in getting off so lightly. Somehow he felt…cheap. Like he'd cheated or something.

Looking at the assembled crewmen, as the last sombre bars of the trumpet sounded, Kaiden had to admit to himself that he felt guilty there weren't more up there. And there could have been more up there; Kaiden just couldn't deny that fact. Above all he felt terrible that Shepard wasn't among the living as well.

But then she probably would have been pushing for a new ship to go out and destroy the sons of bitches responsible. Nobody did this to her crew and got away with it. Nobody. Saren got away lightly for his role behind Ashley's death.

Beside him, Garrus shifted in his seat, decked out in C-Sec dress uniform. Even after all this time dealing with them, turian expressions remained unreadable to Kaiden. He hazarded a guess that it had something to do with the mandibles, sort of like human lips, but otherwise turians all seemed to just scowl. Still, he got the impression that Garrus was just as hard hit by Shepard's death, and the loss of the Normandy, just as much as the rest of them. The turian had spent a lot of time gazing ponderously at the wreath laid for her, or else at his taloned hands or the holographic projector.

"An impressive turnout," the C-Sec officer finally said, his flanged voice so low it was almost a purr to Kaiden's ears.

Kaiden nodded, keeping quiet and only half-listening. His thoughts were still replaying those horrible minutes (although at the time it had seemed like hours) where the ship had started to tear itself apart under the brutal assault of that alien vessel, the screech of buckling metal and popping joints biting into Kaiden's ears, along with the roar of fires and explosions, the screams and shouts of panicked crewman and the crackle of short-circuiting equipment. How many people did he pass, unknowing? Locked away behind malfunctioning doors he could have opened, lost in smoke he could have searched, or tucked away in corners he didn't inspect? How did Shepard die? Would his presence have made the difference, another set of eyes and hands? Joker wouldn't talk about it and Kaiden never pressed him, but he saw the haunted look in his eyes that the lieutenant found familiar. A part of him couldn't help but think of it as accusing. Those thoughts were the ones that kept him awake late at night, when fire, rumbles and screams dwelled at the edge of dreaming.

"I should have gone with her…" he muttered.

"I'm sorry?"

"N-nothing, Garrus. Just…" A sigh; it had been a long two weeks since the _SS Little Big Horn_ found them all in their pods. "It's nothing."

The Lutheran priest stood again, an aging woman with short cut hair the colour of iron, her ebony hands holding a plain Bible from which she had read Jane's favourite psalm. Speaking in a clear voice she spoke of the importance of strength in these times, of not mourning what was lost but treasuring what had been given, of hope for the future and of pride in what took place in the past. For Commander Shepard had proven the worth of humanity to the galaxy, demonstrated their spirit and prowess not merely as individuals but as a species. Because of her, humanity had at last come of age and was ready to take its place amongst the other races of the galaxy. Whilst the galaxy would be hard pressed to replace those sons and daughters lost aboard the Normandy during that fateful attack, the bar has been set, and it has been proven to be attainable by all who have the guts and the drive. So let no one be consumed by grief, let them instead be moved to pride and admiration, for the achievements of tomorrow shall always been inspired by the victories of today, which have been made possible by the sacrifices of yesterday.

Kaiden felt it a rather poor speech. Not one word was mentioned of the Reapers, either, to no one's surprise. But then why ruin the occasion with mention of the galaxy's impending extinction?

Once again a surge of pain, dull and throbbing, crept up at the sides of Kaiden's temple, setting his teeth grinding as each pulse of pain drove into his skull like heavy iron nails. He pinched the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes away from the stark light of the Citadel and bowed his head a little.

His migraines had been terrible lately. Far worse than usual, and far more frequent. They lingered longer too. Usually they'd arrive every now and then, a brief annoyance before they subsided as suddenly as they came. Now it seemed every half hours, usually whenever he turned his mind to the Normandy's destruction, or Jane, it came upon him like an incessant five year old with a mallet. Chakwas had simply said that it was likely a result of stress and that Kaidan simply needed time to rest, collect himself and recover. She made it sound so routine, so easy. Almost as though Kaiden could just relax on a beach somewhere with a drink in a coconut with a little umbrella and forget it all.

If only, if only.

At least she allowed him a prescription of pain killers; they helped with the worse of them. A damn shame he couldn't take any now…no water. It'd be just his luck to be caught on camera, pulling a stupid expression while he tried to swallow a pill stuck in his throat.

Hopefully there'll be a water cooler somewhere when the service is over.

The former remnants of the Normandy's crew met up in a small bar located in the Presidium, one that immediately declared all their drinks on the house when the owner realised who they were. Apparently her sister had been serving on the _Destiny Ascension_ during the attack and had been saved by the 5th Fleet as it rode in to the rescue. The gesture was gratefully received.

There were only a handful; Garrus, Joker, Liara, Kaiden and Dr Chackwas, although numerous other members of the crew were scattered on other tables. The conversations seemed almost normal, until you noticed something almost like a shadow that cast itself over each group that everyone seemed to be trying to ignore. It lingered over each table, bringing attention to itself even as people tried their best to put it out of their minds. It reminded Kaiden of the old Pink Elephants mind game. Don't think about pink elephants. Although mostly drowned out by the general ambiance of the bar, the glitzy salarian pop music playing in the background did very little to ease the mood. If anything, it made the free drinks even more welcome.

Salarians did wonders in the laboratory and the intelligence services, but they were obviously not meant to sing. Or make music. Or write it. At least in Kaiden's opinion.

Shepard's old squad were silent for a while, occasionally glancing at each other before contemplating other areas of the room. No one seemed to want to say anything. Could've been that they didn't _know_ what to say, but Kaiden's money was on them just being unable to speak what was on their minds. Chakwas was drumming her long, elegant pianist fingers on the table, while Garrus stared out the window as though it was the most fascinating show on the Citadel. Liara's gaze, meanwhile, lingered on her clasped hands, her blank face defying the ponderous look in her eyes. He didn't know why, but Kaiden got the impression she was plotting something. He could practically see the cogs in her mind whirring.

Joker, however, looked lost. From the moment he arrived at the table, he had sat there, gazed into his drink and looked for all the world like someone who had just found out that he had some horrible, incurable disease that was slowly killing him. His face was ashen, his eyes focusing on something only he could see and his posture that of a man who had not been sleeping well. Out of all of them, the past events seemed to have struck the pilot especially hard. There was once a time when Kaiden would have been thankful for Joker's sarcastic, irreverent joking and teasing to have had a stopper put on it, for him to be silent and serious for once. Now Kaiden seriously wished he was more careful in what he asked for.

_I thought I could save her, LT_, he'd said as Kaiden found him in the infirmary of the _Little Big Horn_, being treated for the broken ribs he'd acquired when Shepard had manhandled him into a pod. _I thought I could save her. I was so close…I just needed…_

There was nothing Kaiden wanted to do more at that point than hit him. This was just too much. How dare he? How dare he!? Because of his stupidity, his arrogance, Jane was gone. Because of him, Commander Shepard, hero of Elysium, of Eden Prime, of the Battle of Citadel, was a sorry crater on some godforsaken planet! Because of that idiotic bastard with the gimpy legs…! And there he was trying to justify himself, to try and worm his way out of responsibility. Dammit, she deserved better than that!

Had Joker tried to argue further that he could have saved the Normandy there would have been no holding back. Kaiden would have pounded him until he was pulled away or Joker's face turned into half a pound of mince. So the pilot had a soft skull did he? Let's see how well it holds up to a good biotic punch.

By God, Kaiden was more than ready. He had a lot of stress to work out.

But Joker didn't to justify himself. For a while he didn't say anything; he just looked at Kaiden pleadingly until finally he dissolved into sobbing.

_I'm sorry Kaiden…_ he said, in a tone of voice that robbed Kaiden's anger of its righteousness. God_, I'm so sorry…it's all my fault…I should have listened…_

That angered Kaiden even more; not only had Joker taken Jane away from him but now he'd robbed him of his chance to be angry at him too. But then that wasn't how Jane would have done it. Never. She knew better than to just give in to anger like that so easily, especially at someone as tortured as Joker was.

So what else could Kaiden do? He forgave him. He had no choice.

It was Garrus who broke the silence, looking away from the view of the Citadel the multitude of insect-like ships zipping through the arms of the wards and towards the table at large.

"So," he said. "What's going to happen to you now?"

Dr Chackwas sighed. "That's the brass to decide, Garrus," she said, her tone somewhat resigned. "But word on the grapevine is that we're being split up."

"Wait, what?" Liara suddenly looked up from her hands, her expression startled. "Split up?"

"The crew is too loyal to Shepard, even now. I get the impression that the Powers That Be are left a little worried about what we might do if left together, or that a new commander wouldn't be as respected. We stole the Normandy once before to go after Saren. Perhaps they think we'll do so again to track down who did this to us."

"But…split up the Normandy? Will they really do that? _Can_ they do that?"

"Unfortunately they can, Liara," Kaiden said. "And they probably will. Besides, what would we do now that Shepard's gone? She made this crew. I don't think…I just don't think anyone else could ever pick up the pieces. Especially not with the Normandy gone too."

Liara was silent for a moment, trying to formulate an argument. Ever since Saren was stopped and Sovereign defeated, she'd been a part of the Normandy's crew just as much as anyone else there. For all intents and purposes, the Normandy was her home. Her crew were her family and friends. Aboard that ship, Liara belonged. In that sense, Kaiden could all too much see why she'd want things to remain the same. From little she knew, Liara was something a social outcast even among the usually tolerant, cosmopolitan asari.

"I have to admit…" Liara suddenly said, her soft voice making her sound as though she was scared to be overhead. "I too don't see much point in staying now that Shepard's gone."

That caught Kaiden by surprise. "Oh I…uh, where will you go?"

"I'm…I'm not sure. Going back to my old studies now seems almost…pointless, in a way. Especially since it seems likely that, in a few years, we will all be reduced to hollow ruins and scattered artefacts ourselves."

The asari turned to look out a window, towards the "skyline" of the wards and the flights of countless ships and skycabs, so tiny they looked almost unreal as they zipped in neat lines between the towers, made into silhouettes by the light of the nebula that the Citadel floated in. She seemed to study it before returning to the group at large.

"I might travel for a bit. Collect my thoughts. Maybe try and see if I can find out what attacked us and why. Who knows? I may even find another way to stop the Reapers."

"The Council seems convinced that the geth were behind the attack," Chackwas said, her tone clearly saying what she thought of that theory.

"Oh, the Council's blaming _everything_ on the geth," Garrus muttered. "A ship goes missing, it's the geth. A colony goes out of contact, it's the geth. The damned Citadel gets attacked by an eldritch abomination on a killing spree and what do you know? It's the damned geth. It's that or pirates."

"Well, you can imagine the panic that might arise if they told everyone that a race of sapient machines were on the way, machines that have been destroying all organic life in the galaxy since the beginning of time, for all we know," Chakwas said.

Garrus hissed irritably and looked back to his drink, mandibles flicking in much the same way a cat might flick its tail when annoyed. Kaiden couldn't blame him; it had been rough on everyone. And Garrus had the additional stress of being back in C-Sec; from what little he'd mentioned of it the place had gotten worse since Sovereign tore the place up. A lot of officers were slaughtered by the geth and collateral damage both. There were huge gaps in the command chain that had to be rapidly refilled, areas in the wards that had become hotspots of crime because manpower shortages meant they weren't being monitored, the frustration of people asking for help they can't provide. Then the turian stood, downed his glass, which had been filled with a strange milky-green fluid, and paid his tab on his omnitool.

"I've got to get back to work soon; a lot of C-Sec officers were killed in the attack and we're still running with huge gaps in coverage. Palin is running my ass like a varren in heat. But it was…it was good seeing you all again. Even if…uh. Yeah."

Another awkward silence descended. To think, they'd been planning a get together again for a while but never seemed able to get round to it. Tali couldn't just leave the Flotilla as and when she pleased, there was always something that Shepard and the Normandy needed doing and, as Garrus noted, C-Sec was still reeling from the Battle of the Citadel.

It suddenly made Joker's off-hand comment that at that rate their first get together would be for someone's funeral strangely biting in its prophecy.

"It was good seeing you too, Garrus," Liara said, before standing herself. "And I think I'll leave too. I have things that I'd like to do." She had a strange look in her eyes that Kaiden had never seen in them before, although he knew right away what it was; he'd seen it in Jane's eyes often enough.

Liara was on a mission.

"So that's it?" Joker said, at last. The outburst and his tone made everyone glance at him. "We're just gonna part ways and go on like always? Just like that?"

"We're never going to go on as we used to, Jeff." The way Chakwas was looking at her glass suggested that she no longer felt it adequate in volume. "Never. But we're not going to forget either. And I don't believe the Commander would want us to fall apart on her behalf for that matter."

Kaiden sighed. "I guess you're right. And I'm not going to stop fighting either. The Council has to be made to see reason, somehow, and there's no reason why that can't be done through the system."

This was met with a snort. "You're so naïve, Kaiden," Joker muttered, shaking his head. Kaiden felt his teeth clench as a new migraine kicked in.

_Please. Not now Joker._

"It's what Shepard would have said, though," Garrus noted. "_The rules and regulations are there for a reason. When you stop following them, people get hurt._ Or something like that."

"That _is_ something Shepard would say," Joker said with a sigh. "Kind of annoying. Like that kid in the class who always does their homework and has a heart attack when someone speaks without putting their hand up." Now there was the old Joker again. Perhaps he was finally getting better? "I guess…we'll just have to see what happens then. But we should definitely meet up again. Swap stories or something, I dunno."

"Yeah, I'd like that," the turian said with a nod. "But as I said, I need to get going. Good luck, everyone."

With that he turned on his heels and, with Liara in tow, walked out of the bar, the automatic doors sliding open and shut to let him through. The three humans remained for a moment, an awkward silence descended amongst them like a heavy, smothering blanket. In the background the electro-pop music kept playing, mingling with the chatter of conversation in a thousand different tongues made mutually intelligible by the wonders of Citadel science, the clinking of glasses containing a myriad of drinks, the scraping of chairs and, occasionally, the distant ringing of someone winning a quasar game out towards the back. It was Chakwas who broke the silence between them.

"So, shall I buy the next round? Or are we going to sit here in silence and with empty glasses all day? I might just be able to handle the former, but I'm afraid I won't stand for the latter."


	2. The Ice Queen

"Miranda," the voice was relaxed, almost jovial, as though the two were old friends meeting in a bar, rather than the head of a paramilitary organisation receiving a report from his lieutenant via a quantum entanglement communications array. "Has it been a week already?"

Almost lazily, the Illusive Man raised the cigarette he'd been smoking to his lip and inhaled. The red flash of light illuminated some of his face, suggesting features such as the nose, the mouth and lines beneath his eyes. There was no escaping the eyes themselves however. Bright blue, luminous and clearly artificial, they demanded attention the way a venomous animal's bright colouring demanded caution. They seemed to drill into you as well, stripping past the flesh, the bones and the lies you tell everyone and yourself, the identity you craft that keeps you sane. With all that removed, those eyes only saw you, naked and vulnerable and open. Jacob had once even questioned whether or not there was anything truly human in them.

Perhaps he could be forgiven for it.

Herself, Miranda was far too professional to let such childish aversions disrupt the relationship between herself and the Illusive Man, or at least that was how she preferred to think of it. At the end of the day, the Illusive Man remained an inspiring and very human figure, someone any person could feel comfort, and indeed pride, working under. Working under him had given Miranda freedom and opportunities she didn't dare think possible anywhere else.

But even then…that didn't stop those stark irises from being a little intimidating.

Maintaining her demeanour, standing with her arms behind her yet her feet together, head high and her eyes firmly meeting those of her superior, almost pointedly, Miranda Lawson inclined her head. It helped that she and the Illusive Man had a very good rapport between each other; that did wonders to ease tensions that sometimes occurred between leaders and their subordinates. And the Illusive Man was easy to talk to. He seldom raised he voice, even when angry, and spoke with a casual ease that invited confidence even if he never said anything definite either way. There was no denying that he was formidable, even dangerous, but Miranda had worked with him long enough to know the cues and how to avoid arousing his displeasure. Now, however, came the hard part.

"It has, sir. Unfortunately I don't bring any news better than the last. Our results are the same as they've always been and we're making no visible progress towards improvement. Shepard's body is very much alive but there's no one home, to put it crudely."

The Illusive Man shifted in his seat, his expression obscured by the glare of the star behind him. It wasn't blinding, the worst of the light was specially filtered by the porthole-cum-computer display that formed the backdrop of the Illusive Man's "study", as Miranda had come to think of it. The sight of it was really quite awe inspiring, and she imagined that it provided a good focus point for when her superior wished to dwell on something. But it left the Illusive Man's face obscured by a dark shadow, leaving only the twin pinpricks of light for his eyes. Any outward facial expressions were nearly impossible to read. Even so, Miranda could tell simply by experience and common sense that her report had not left him ecstatic with joy.

"That's unfortunate," he said, tapping some ash off his cigarette and into the ashtray placed within his seat. "I was hoping that she'd finally wake up after the adjustments you and Dr Wilson suggested."

It was hard to keep herself from letting out an exasperated groan. She hated failure. A challenge was fantastic, but only when she had a chance to succeed. With Shepard, however…

"It should have _worked_," she said, barely keeping her voice level. "All other test subjects responded favourably to developed procedures. A 99.9% chance of success at least in some cases, but when it comes to Shepard…we get nothing. It's like she's cursed or something, like she's actively resisting our efforts to revive her."

"Hardly a scientific analysis," the Illusive Man replied. "But I can understand why you'd say that."

"Science seems to be failing me, sir," Miranda all but muttered. "We're hitting a wall here, but no one on my team can figure out why. Our initial reports indicated that she should have been off life-support weeks ago, yet here we are with what can only be described as a vegetable."

By all accounts, Shepard should have been ready to be properly awakened within the next month, and if not by then certainly the month after that. Physically, Shepard had been almost completely restored, much of what was left for Miranda's team to work on was purely cosmetic. In theory she could have been raised now, although that would have been courting some complication if not done with utmost care. The transformation of her body from a charred, horribly mutilated corpse into a functioning organism should have been the hardest part of the project and the worst of that was over, or so the scientists claimed.

And yet, for some reason, while they had Shepard's body, they just couldn't get Shepard. Brain scans revealed minimal activity; barely enough for them to even class her as being truly alive. When "woken" she simply stared into space, sometimes not even breathing, and her pulse was weak, almost reluctant. Scientists had taken to saying that it was as though she lacked a soul, some sort of spark that would get her going, although they're quick to admit that such a term is a gross simplification.

Not that it stopped them from constantly wondering out loud where one might be able to acquire one, or where Shepard's might have gone when she died.

There was a pause, as the cigarette was again raised and his face illuminated by its glow, before he let loose a long puff of smoke. For a moment he remained silent before, almost probingly, asking, "So is Project Lazarus a failure, then?"

Miranda stiffened, her eyes steeling. "I never said that, sir."

"This is costing Cerberus time and money, Miranda. Neither of which we can afford. The Reapers could be on us at any moment and with every week that passes another human colony could go missing. Shepard is our best chance at victory, but if she can't - or won't - wake up soon, then we're just going to have to consider another avenue."

He paused again, before leaning forward. "Miranda," he said, almost fatherly, "I know how hard you've been working on this project. Arguably, even without the results we've all been hoping for, you've worked miracles. But there're always going to be some things that we just can't do. Resurrecting Shepard obviously being one of them."

"But why just Shepard?" Miranda just couldn't get her head round it. "Anything else comes back fine. It makes no sense…"

"And I can't afford to have you chasing that question anymore. I need you to start working on other matters and I can't keep funding this venture." He sighed and leaned back in his seat, rubbing his temple. For a moment he was silent, the only sounds being the hum of the machinery around him. That moment seemed to stretch to unnatural lengths as Miranda stood attentively.

"I'll give you another week, Miranda," he said at last. "If she shows no sign of improvement, we're going to have to pull the plug on her. It's not a complete loss; we've developed new technology that could earn us trillions once we ease them onto the markets and give us an edge in our future projects. But we're not getting Shepard, it seems."

That wasn't what she wanted to hear. Of course she knew she'd probably not enjoy her usual habit of blinding success the moment she realised that Shepard was long overdue to start experiencing subconscious brain activity, but hearing it out loud struck her like a punch to the gut. At once a great weight settled on her chest and this time she couldn't stop regret settling into her voice.

"Yes sir."

"And I don't want you getting worked up over this." There was an iron edge to his voice now. "When this is over, I'd like you to take some time off. Say a week or two back home on Earth, or maybe Eden Prime now that it's been fixed up. You've been working hard, Miranda, and I want you in top condition for your next assignment. With Shepard gone, we're going to have to find another way to stop the Reapers and investigate those missing colonists. I'm going to need you at your best and on the ball."

The Illusive Man let loose one last stream of smoke, which billowed out slowly towards the darkness of the ceiling. Then he leaned towards the ashtray and stubbed out his cigarette at last, before settling back into his seat and fixing his eyes on her.

Miranda knew that sign well enough.

Sure enough, almost immediately after the last of the smoke had dissipated he said, "You're dismissed, Miss Lawson" before terminating the connection, the image of his study disappearing with a line of orange light and leaving Miranda in the darkened communications room, staring at the spot of wall where the Illusive Man's face had been a few seconds before. She glared at it intently for a good while, before turning away with a scowl.

"God dammit!" she muttered, storming towards the stairs towards the lobby of the station.

)O(

For much of the station, the news that Miranda had managed to wrangle one last week from the Illusive Man was met with what could only be described as the bastard child between dread and relief. No one relished the idea of yet another seven days spent prodding what was essentially a corpse that hadn't realised it was dead yet, but at the same time there was still that forlorn hope that this, _this_ would be the day when Shepard truly woke up. When all their hard work, their sacrifice and pain finally paid off. It was a feeling that Miranda shared.

After Miranda had departed from her shuttle she had been greeted almost immediately by Dr Wilson and Lacroix, the Chief Medical Officer and her PA respectively. Unsurprisingly they reported no change in the time between Miranda's departure and return, with the rest of their reports being trivia; crew rotations, incoming messages from other cells, security notices and such like. Nothing was particularly noteworthy amongst that either.

Thanking them curtly and ordering them to report back to their stations, Miranda strode immediately in the direction of her office, cutting off anything further the two may have had to say.

She sat there now, typing furiously away on her terminal and trying hard to keep her mind away from her meeting with the Illusive Man. It was proving incredibly hard not to however.

_One more week?_ Miranda thought, her eyes scanning a long list of biological hypothesises suggested by the science team that may help wake Shepard at last._ I suppose I'm lucky to have gotten more than one more day. The project hadn't made any progress since we got Shepard's vital functions all working independently. But still_...

Her eyes cast towards a security monitor she'd set up, overlooking the motionless form of the woman Cerberus had spent more in an hour than most colonies make in a year to try and revive. She was linked up to the life-support again, her eyes staring blankly towards the ceiling and her skin pale from lack of contact with the sun. Muscle reconstruction had given her the athletic form she would have possessed before the Normandy was attacked and a tube feeding into her stomach pumped vital nutrients and supplements into her system. For modesty's sake, she was in a simple hospital gown, the same that could be found in any health centre in Alliance-controlled space, although it wasn't as though Shepard would have been able to protest had she been butt naked.

Although God knew, Miranda had seen more of Shepard than she ever cared to. She had completely forgotten that that green wobbly bit even existed until she'd seen it growing in a vat.

The Chief Officer of the Lazarus project sighed dejectedly and buried her face in her palms, the material of her all-in-one cat suit soft against her brow. In that position she tried to think. What hadn't she tried yet? She and her crew must have gone over every positive angle.

"Computer," she said aloud, "Coffee, please. Black and two."

There was a chime from the corner of her room, followed by a soft _thock_ as a polystyrene cup materialised into existence and then a gurgle as the coffee machine squirted steaming hot coffee into it. While this was ongoing, Miranda picked up a holopad and read through the security reports.

Jacob's update was methodical and to the point. An Alliance cruiser passed through the system briefly, presumably on a routine run, but they managed to mask their signals and pass under the ship's sensors. All routine, really, and the Alliance were none the wiser. Other than that small episode, it was as quiet as you'd expect out in the middle of nowhere.

Suddenly Miranda wondered if she wanted a holiday somewhere as quiet as Eden Prime when this was all over. Maybe she could head over somewhere a little more exciting instead. Let her hair down in Illium, maybe, or visit the New York megatropolis and see whether they've managed to reconstruct Lady Liberty yet.

Once the coffee was ready, Miranda stood, stretched like a cat and walked over to the coffee machine when, suddenly, the world shook beneath her feet.

_Whumb._

The coffee fell off its perch and spilled its hot contents on the floor, staining the carpet and probably spraying over some electrical systems, but that was the least of Miranda's worries.

Maintaining her balance, Miranda immediately shouted, "Computer, report!"

A small holographic image of a woman's face appeared on her desk. "Sensors detect a data corruption in the security mechs' databanks. Systems 1a through to 125c are currently not responding to proper protocols."

There was another rumble and a tremble through the floor.

"Warning. Fires detected in Sector 7-G, 7-D and 6-A. Fire prevention systems are offline. Sounding alarm."

True to its word, the distress alarm sounded, its buzz-like drone reverberating off the walls and accompanied by a flashing orange light. From her observation window overlooking several walkways, she could see people hurriedly assembling outside their offices and workstations.

"Dammit! Bring up the intercom!" The woman's face was immediately replaced with the image of an old-fashioned microphone, which flashed green. "Attention, all staff! Malfunction reported with the station's security mechs. You are all to arm yourselves and await further orders. Do not, I repeat, do not attempt to approach the mechs unarmed and unaccompanied. Any staff in Sectors 7 and 6 are to evacuate to another sector immediately. All those in the medbay, _protect Shepard at all costs!_"

With that done, Miranda worked immediately to try and access the mechs' security systems and work out what went wrong. As she worked, the sounds of gunfire, explosions, panicked shouting and, occasionally, screams filtered through into her office. And to think! She'd just been complaining about how quiet it had all been. Well how was this for excitement? Be careful what you wish for, Miranda, be very careful what you wish for.

As soon as she was in, all Miranda could see was the programmers' equivalent of burning wreckage following a car bomb - someone had really done a number on the coding for the mechs. All had been released, their target recognition scrambled, safety protocols removed and their links disabled. They weren't going to respond to commands from the terminal; Miranda or a technician will have to use an omnitool to do anything to them. Although, it would be much easier to simply destroy the bastards when it came to that. But how the hell could this have happened? The systems were locked up tighter than the Pope's secret stash of pornography and any attempts at accessing them without authorisation would have set off an alarm…

Without authorisation.

Someone sabotaged them. But who? The only ones with access to the security mechs were Miranda herself, Dr Wilson and Jacob…

There was another explosion, but this time it was right outside her office door. It was so close that it sent a violent tremor through her office, knocking over numerous items all of which seemed to be breakable or capable of producing a mess. She swore that the potted plant didn't have nearly as much dirt as had been upended on the floor. The roar and sound of breaking building was punctuated by a shrill scream that was brutally cut short by a rattle of gunfire.

The scream was all too familiar by the tone of its voice, and the fact that there'd be no one else around left no doubt as to who issued it.

_Lacroix…!_

Miranda leapt to her feet and reached for a pistol when the door to her office suddenly flew of its hinges, crashing into the opposite wall and sending her flying, both because she'd dived out of the way and also from the force of the missile that had propelled it. A wave of heat enveloped her like as though she'd just been thrown into a hot bath and she could taste the bitter iron taste of blood. Judging from the dull throbbing pain in her lower lip, she must have bitten it upon landing.

Grunting with pain, her side screaming in protest from her awkward landing, Miranda tried to push herself up from the floor, her arms trembling under her weight. Casting her face upwards, she could see one of the large Ymir mechs force itself through the door, its small head scanning the room and spotting her almost instantly. There was no hesitation, the machine pointed its main gun at her and she could hear the rotaries start to spin. There'd barely be a few minutes left before it sent several thousand mass-propelled rounds into her body within the second.

Desperately she tried to form a biotic shield directly in front of her, imagining the concave shield vividly in her mind as her hands formed the mnemonic gesture to help her focus. However her limbs were clumsy and sluggish and so was her mind. With a detached matter-of-factness that Miranda should have been surprised by, she realised that she was going to die.

It was odd, that knowledge. Too odd. In that one moment of the realisation of her mortality, Miranda found it within herself to question. Question everything. Not just why events happened in such a way that she was to find herself on her hands and knees in a blown out office, trying feebly to ward of a very grizzly end delivered from the barrel of a minigun. But, curiously, other things about that moment that just didn't seem right. From there it progressed to things that didn't seem right about the world in general. Not the usual ridiculous moral pandering, such as why there are still starving children on the African continent or suffering slaves in the Hegemony. Proper problems with the reality of _everything_.

It occurred to her in that instance that there had always been strange events that had made her start to look into space and question things, from the way light played on water to the very thoughts in her head, but before she could properly focus on them something always came up to distract her. There was always something more pressing. But now, faced with her demise, Miranda's mind became focused like a laser beam and now there was nothing else to draw her away from those thoughts gnawing away at her perceptions of the world.

Looking deep down the barrel of her End, Miranda doubted. From that doubt came searching. From that search came a slow realisation, like ice cold water gradually trickling down the back of her neck and opening her eyes for the first time.

At the edges of her vision, Miranda became aware of a strange frosting and blurring effect, like looking through a lens that had been breathed on.

The rotating guns, after what seemed like an eternity, finally let rip. At exactly the same time, Miranda Awoke.

)O(

_She isn't here._

_The Shepard on your table is not the Shepard you seek._

_Find the Golden Gates. Find the place of Time and Fate. The Changing Lands of the Lords and Ladies._

_You will find her there._

_A debt is owed to you. Use it now._

)O(

Hurriedly, Wilson made his way through the floors and tunnels of the burning station, teeth gritted with terror as he tried to ignore as best as he could the sounds of gunfire, alarms and screams. The docks were just ahead, up the stairs and along the platform. The mechs would have prevented anyone else from boarding, so the shuttle should still be there. Once aboard, he can send his message off to the Shadow Broker, receive his pay and probably retire to some exotic planet.

Thessia sounds nice. Or maybe Illium. Less likely to ask questions.

The mechs on the floor turned to face him as he approached and not for the first time Wilson froze in a panic, his mind doubting whether his hastily made ID would register with them. Not for the first time, it held perfectly. Politely advising him to clear the area on account of detected hostiles in their artificial canned voices, they let him be and continued their awkward, staggering patrols of the room.

Wilson breathed a sigh of relief, letting trepidation give way to jubilation as, at long last, he hurriedly approached the doors to the docks. This was it: he was free! Just another couple of doors and he'll be free of this station, of that unresponsive zombie and of that Ice Queen for life. He hoped they'd all rot in Hell.

Holstering his pistol, Wilson touched the holographic lock and came to the final door. It had been locked, as he'd intended it to be, which meant that he'd just need to spend a few extra seconds breaking through it. Easy as pie, considering he knew what the code was. Sure enough after the same amount of time it took to brew an espresso coffee, Wilson had broken through and was in the docks.

To his horror, he was not the first to arrive.

"Miranda! But you're…"

Giving him a look of pure venom, she raised a hand towards him, curiously empty. Wilson's own hand darted to his pistol, but his fingers had barely brushed against the grip when suddenly a bolt of pure, electrical energy sprung like a serpent's tongue from Miranda's palm. Wilson had just enough time to register a peculiar hybrid of terror, bewilderment and pain before his brain boiled in his skull.

"Dead?" she finished for him, with the barest trace of humour in her voice.

A smoking, charred husk collapsed to the floor, barely recognisable, and Miranda casually pressed her earpiece, connecting to Jacob.

"Jacob? This is Miranda. I've found our traitor and dealt with him appropriately. Gather what survivors you can find and report to the shuttle within ten minutes. We're leaving this station. Yes, bring Shepard with you. I'm not done with her yet. Very good. Miranda out."

Casting just one glance towards the blackened remains that were once Dr Wilson, Miranda gave a slight wave of her hand and, apparently without touching him, sent the carcass hurtling down a maintenance shaft into the innards below. Jacob was a good soldier, unfortunately, and wouldn't ask questions. It was perhaps best if he didn't learn of Miranda's little development.

She raised her hands and looked at them carefully, her mind still reeling. She could _see_ the energy and heat and electrical charges, feel it pulsing through her intensely. She could see a new energy as well that she never even knew existed, blue, nebulous and bursting with potential. What exactly happened she had no idea, but one thing was for certain and that it was _big_. There was also the message she received during it, back in the tower of white marble, covered with names, where she had marked her own down with the tip of her finger. What did that mean?

Slowly Miranda lowered her hands again, still trembling and still breathing heavily. Any lesser human would have collapsed into a gibbering wreck, driven mad by revelation of truths too much for ordinary minds, but Miranda had been designed better. Shaken as she was, she was capable of keeping it together.

Even so…she found focus hard to keep hold of. One question thudded within her head as incessant and loud as the fast-paced beating of her heart.

What _was_ she now?


	3. Wake Up and Smell the Ashes

_Author's Note: Readers may have noticed this new chapter I slipped between the previous two uploaded; this is quite deliberate. I thought the transition from Miranda's Awakening and Shepard's escape from Arcadia was too abrupt, and that Fraxinus (under his alias as Frederick Mayhew) could be better introduced. This chapter also helps break up the action and provide some much-needed examination on Miranda's Awakening and how it affects the Mass Effect setting at large._

_Hope this chapter keeps you reading!_

)O(

The chilled conditioned air of the shuttle was welcome as it blew against Miranda's brow, gently tussling at her fringe. She sat there for a while, hunched over, her hands clasped together and her eyes focused on an unspecific spot of the floor. Cool orange light spilled against it, highlighting the braised pattern and casting minute shadows barely the breadth of her little finger.

Her mind still reeled.

Most minds would have shattered after experiencing what she had, the sheer mindboggling impossibility. The average sensibility was based, after all, on a concrete understanding of what is and what is not. When that understanding was brought into question, severe complications could arise. Miranda, fortunately, was far more resilient than most minds.

You had to be if you wished to progress as far as she did in Cerberus. When it came to the progression of Humanity, it was necessary to believe a hundred impossible things before breakfast.

Even so…what Miranda had just experienced…

The vision she had was still fixed vividly in her mind. The serene, heavenly surroundings, like a child's impression of what Heaven might look like. The white tower, impossibly tall, and the large doors of Ivory and Gold. The room larger than the central ring of the Presidium, its walls covered in names. Miranda inscribing her own with the peacock feather quill and the explosion of light and the spread of fire through her body.

The melted remains of the Ymir mech, the metal still glowing from where _something_ had bisected it at the waist.

After what she did to Wilson, more out of impulse than conscious effort, Miranda strongly suspected that _she_ had been the force responsible. The very idea terrified and enthralled her equally.

She opened her palms and stared at them, as though expecting lightning to shoot from her fingertips again, to feel that strange, almost euphoric warmth sweep through her body as she enforced her Will and saw the Universe respond. Miranda had always carried the knowledge of her superiority lightly. It was not arrogance; it was just a fact, like her hair colour or the size of her shoes. The reason for her birth was to provide her Father a legacy he thought was worthy of him, an image of himself that he would find agreeable. As such her intelligence, her biotic capability, her looks, all of that, was something that she had already been determined for her. She could no more feel pride for that than she could her name.

But this…

For the first time in a long while, Miranda was overwhelmed by the potential suddenly laid open before her. A potential perhaps even her Father had never anticipated. How could he?

She must have been staring at her hands for a while, because suddenly she felt a hand gently touch her elbow. In a moment of uncharacteristic unease, Miranda flinched.

"Miranda?" Jacob's large brown eyes were pierced with concern. "How are you holding up? You don't look good."

Even with her heightened intellect, it took Miranda a second before she could gather herself. "I…I'm fine, Jacob," she said, forcing up a barrier of professionalism. "Just the adrenaline. I'll feel better the moment I've made my report."

Jacob looked unconvinced, but didn't press the issue. He'd worked with her long enough to know when not to. "Aye, aye, ma'am. I suppose this will be putting the plug on the Lazarus Project for once and for all; we lost a lot of vital intel back there."

"I suppose you're right." Miranda strangely felt no regret. "We have Shepard, though. Keeping her from falling into the wrong hands is enough."

"What about the Reapers? And the missing colonists?"

"The Reapers we can do nothing about until we learn more of them. As for the colonists, they're a more tangible concern. I'm certain the Illusive Man has a backup plan in case Lazarus failed."

"No doubt," Jacob said, grinning slightly. "I swear that man is twice as paranoid as you are."

"I wouldn't call it paranoia. More…foresighted. But regardless, we'll find out soon enough."

Jacob nodded and settled back into his seat. "A damn shame, though," he said, staring thoughtfully from the starboard porthole. "Bringing back Shepard would have been a damn thing to achieve."

Miranda said nothing, her mind flicking back to the voice she heard back in the Tower. Although the rest of what was said was typically cryptic to an infuriating degree, one part was plain enough. If it could be believed.

)O(

It was not to her surprise when returning to Sanctum Station T-22 that her shuttle was met with an immediate hail, informing her that the Illusive Man required her presence at the Quantum Entanglement Array at once. Even if she hadn't forewarned the station of her arrival beforehand, the Illusive Man had a way of knowing when things were occurring that bordered on the incredible.

As the shuttle came to dock, Miranda ran through her mental report a thirtieth time, ensuring that she knew exactly what she intended to say and how to say it. Then she checked her omnitool, reviewing the files that Jacob had managed to retrieve just before Lazarus's mainframes were blown. All seemed in order.

So it was that as she descended to the QEC, letting herself sink into that state of detached professionalism, Miranda felt no fear in what she had to deliver.

The QEC slowly activated, the scanners tracing over Miranda to send a holographic image of herself at near-instantaneous speeds to the Illusive Man's private office. The link established, the Man in question flickered into view within a patchwork of holographic light.

He was sat where he always was, within his chair and overlooking the massive dying star that was so often the focus of his attentions. At that moment he seemed busy, flicking through half a dozen reports and with a half-empty glass of brandy sitting on a small surface attached to his armrest. The definition was too indistinct for Miranda to make out anything specific on the screens that the Illusive Man was reviewing, but she swore she recognised images from security feeds onboard Lazarus Station. Before she could examine those further, the Illusive Man waved them away and spun slowly on his seat to face her. Once again, his face was obscured in shadow, only the pinpricks of light from his synthetic eyes illuminating his face.

"Miranda," he said, his voice as relaxed as always. "Good to see you in one piece."

"Thank you, sir," Miranda said. "I have the report of what occurred. It would seem that your concerns regarding the Shadow Broker were-"

She was waved into silence, the Illusive Man straightening in his seat and staring at her fixedly. A sense on unease washed over her, a sense she had not felt since her first meeting with him, years ago when she was a lost, confused and desperate woman uncertain of her place within the galaxy. He had given her that look back then as well, as though he was studying some specimen in a lab. Stripping her down mentally to her component parts and analysing how each fitted together. This was not what she had expected.

"Sir, may I ask-?"

"You've Awakened." Miranda could actually hear the capital A. "I thought there was something peculiar about the way Wilson suddenly vanished. I suppose I should extend my congratulations."

"Congratulations…?" It was not often that Miranda was left feeling out of the loop. She suddenly appreciated why some came to resent her. "And what do you mean about Dr Wilson? Did you suspect something all along?" She felt betrayed that he had not confided these suspicions with her to begin with.

"Suspicions, but no proof. I was hoping to look into it at a later time, but I guess Wilson would not wait. We're lucky he didn't do more damage."

Miranda tried to batter the resentment down. This was not the time to throw a childish tantrum. "Sir, what is going on?"

The Illusive Man for a moment was silent, taking the moment to withdraw his cigarette case from a pocket, place one of the contents between his lips and light it with an antique lighter. His face was illuminated with a flare of yellow light before it was obscured by smoke. Having built up a suitably tense atmosphere, he spoke again.

"Tell me, at some point in the last few days, have you experienced a vision, where you saw a Tower of some description, a list of names, a list that you then added your own to? After this vision have you started to notice something strange about the world around you, maybe even performed things you found odd or even believed impossible?"

There was a heavily pregnant pause.

Miranda was quick to put two and two together. "You had it too, haven't you, sir?"

Hidden as his face was by shadow and fumes, Miranda saw the Illusive Man grin. "Welcome to a very exclusive club, Operative Lawson."

He suddenly did something very unexpected, and stood from his seat, placing his cigarette into a holder on his arm rest. Then he held out his hands, lowered his head, and muttered something in a language that Miranda's translator failed to recognise, tracing a letter with a fingertip. It left a glowing, nebulous trail of blue light in its wake, looking at once like an Egyptian hieroglyph, a Nordic rune, a Chinese character and a Mayan pictogram.

As he did so, Miranda was startled to see the Illusive Man suddenly grit his teeth and clench his eyes shut, a dark river of blood gushing from his left nostril. Before she could even shift from her position, the world literally disappeared from under her feet.

With a sound that was reminiscent of a rubber band snapping, Miranda felt the air and its pressure in the room change, and suddenly found herself in the Illusive Man's study. The smell of brandy and cigarette smoke filled her nose, and before her she beheld the great, dying star that so often was the focus of her superior's meditations. In the back of her mind, something noted that in an instant, she had travelled millions of light-years across the galaxy entirely unaided by any observable force.

Even she was impressed with how well she managed to keep her head. Everything within her screamed that what had just happened breached everything she knew about relative physics, about matter, time and space. Her entire understanding of the Universe and the Laws that operated it, beautifully dead, impassive, understandable and immutable Laws, had suddenly been destroyed in as much time as it took for her to blink. A part of her wanted to collapse into a heap and gibble incoherently, like a child that had been abandoned in the galaxy's largest shopping mall. It wanted to scream and run, as fast as she could until her legs gave out, until the world made sense again or the Devil took her, which ever came first. It wanted to blot what she had seen from her mind forever, so she could return to that state of blessed ignorance that she had inhabited since she was an infant. The rest, however, wanted only to understand just what the hell was going on.

Still grinning, the Illusive Man pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbed the blood from his upper lip, even as he approached and, almost fatherly, placed a hand on Miranda's shoulder. "Unflappable as always, I see. Always ready to see something through to the finish. It's one of your best qualities, Miranda."

"Believe me, at the moment I feel as though I've passed into the deepest reaches of insanity, sir," she said.

This was met with a chuckle, and the Illusive Man guided Miranda towards his desk. "Insanity? No. You've become more lucid than you've ever been before in your life. Please take a seat. I have a lot to tell you. And I must ask, before I do so, that you keep an open mind. This will be a lot to take in."

The Cerberus operative kept her eyes fixed on her superior for a moment, as though trying to read him. It was a futile effort, though, so she did as she was bidden. As she settled wordlessly into the plush seat opposite of the expansive desk that was the centre of Cerberus's entire network, Miranda reflected upon the fact that the Illusive Man had a talent for understatement.

)O(

**Citadel, Kithoi Ward, "Din of Din Bar and Club"**

**Two Years, Three Months and Thirteen Days after Commander Shepard's Death**

The bar was like any other on the Citadel; loud, obnoxious and filled with excess. Outside a trio of turian troopers on shore leave were huddled over one of their number, who had fallen onto the floor and was burbling incoherently about gremlins. A krogan bouncer watched on with amusement, while his batarian counterpart leaned casually against the wall as he was chatted up by an asari who had apparently always had a thing for men with more than two eyes. Above them both, a large neon sign showing a winking volus holding aloft a drink flashed in bright greens and blues. Inside was an explosion of light, sound and smell, a deep pulsing beat reverberating through the walls and through the body, working with the bright flashes of the lights to dazzle and overwhelm the senses. The air was tinged with the smell of dry ice, alcohol and pheromones going wild. On the dance floor dozens of dancers of varying races writhed to the music, lost in their own euphoria, while towards the bar and seats others drank themselves into a stupor and yelled to each other over the eponymous din.

It was not a bar one went to for conversation, like the more muted Dark Star Lounge or Flux. People went to Din's Din to drink, to dance and to get high, before returning to either their own beds or that of a recently met acquaintance with hardly any thought of the world immediately beyond their own enjoyment. It was popular to hundreds of residents in the immediate area of Zithoi Wards, but the figures who walked through the doors at that moment were only looking for one.

By all accounts it should have been impossible to see clearly within the disorientating blur of the club, where the lighting was muted and irregular, and the constant blare of the dance floor was omnipresent. But the dark-haired woman at the forefront of the group seemed unbothered by it all, even though she wore no observable means to suppress that overwhelming surge of sensory overload. At once she spotted something, or someone, amidst the crowd, and gestured for her companions to follow.

Wordless they did so, approaching a single figure seated at the bar and watching a couple of asari in skin-tight and highly eroticised commander suits dance, or perhaps more accurately _flex_, on a raised platform within the centre of the ring-shaped bar. He seemed, beyond his impressive height, rather unremarkable; a fair-skinned black-haired human, strongly built, his arms covered in thick, wiry hair, and dressed in a simple yet stylish fashion that could get you just about anywhere in human-settled space.

The woman approached, dressed herself in what was probably the height of club-going fashion amongst humans that week, with her dark hair hanging in care-free tussles over pale, exposed shoulders. It shone in the light, each wave gleaming in the club's lights as she took a seat by the figure and nodded towards one of the bar tenders.

"Frederick Mayhew I presume?" she said, her voice ringing as clearly through the racket of the music as it would were the two completely alone in a small coffee shop.

The figure, Frederick, tensed and shot his attention towards the woman in full, and reached for his belt, instinctively grasping for a weapon. His hand found nothing – weapons were not allowed - but he didn't remove his eyes from her, startled eyes pierced with suspicion.

Miranda, for it was she, grinned and gestured towards the bar. "A drink for your nerves maybe? My treat."

Frederick did not move. His voice carried a deep, bass rumbling tone and the rounded vowels of southern England as he slowly responded. "Who are you?"

He made no comment on the fact that, even with the music blaring all around him, his voice carried towards the other effortlessly. Strangely no one else sitting by the bar appeared to notice, either due to a lack of attention or the diversion of it to other areas of the club.

Miranda waved a hand in a vague gesture. "Someone known by someone you know. So, what's your order?"

Frederick said nothing, still not dropping his guard, so Miranda shrugged her shoulders and gestured to the bar tender for a glass of something Thessian. It arrived promptly, a small glass filled with a pinkish-purple liquid with a neon green straw and a floating berry, which carried a sweet, tangy taste of alien fruit and the slight spice of eezo. Miranda sipped it quickly, before placing it to one said and leaning casually against the bar by her elbow, her pose catlike as she shot Frederick a warm and winning smile.

"Come now, can't a girl buy a man a drink?"

"Only if that's all she's after," Frederick replied.

"You're a sharp man. Just what I'm looking for. You don't have to worry so much, I just wish to make you an offer." Subtly, Miranda shifted, tilting her head to one side so her hair tumbled off the side in a tumble of dark locks, while her pose draw attention to the curve of her chest, her low-cut dress barely suggesting their shape and their pale flesh. "An offer I'm certain I can make worth your while…"

Frederick's eyes drifted predictably, and slowly his stance softened. Still guarded, but less hostile. "I suppose I'm a cider person if you press me," the Englishman said.

Miranda's grin broadened, an eyebrow raised, and made the order.


	4. Faces

**YOU HAVE ABANDONED YOUR POST, COMMANDER.**

The words careened through her like the tolling of gigantic iron bells, forcing her to the floor by their weight and fury. Each syllable drove white hot into her skull, every tone shaking her bones into powder. His words made her insides clench with fear, anger, despair, regret and shame. Around her the light dimmed and upon the air she could smell the acrid stench of sulphur and something that reminded her of the acids they used to use in ancient chemical batteries.

Next to her she heard Bright-Eyed Sam groan with terror, while behind her Garthog remained deathly silent, although she could feel and smell and taste his fear mingled with fury radiating off him like cold heat.

They had already lost Imber to the Captain's guards, her metallic squeals echoing off the Ship's corridors long after her body was dissolved by their spear-guns. Prince went shortly afterwards, going mad with fear and darting off down the wrong corridor. His high-pitched pleas for mercy that rung behind them said all they needed to know about how well he fared. The last to perish was Kendra, who attempted to convince the Ship to open her doors to the Straight Road but was asked a price she proved unable to bear in exchange. Her sacrifice hung heavy on them all, but stung Shepard the most.

It should have been you, the voiceless Hedge screamed at her accusingly, It should have been you.

Around them the Straight Road stretched like a disturbingly beautiful boulevard, rowed with tall white trees with leaves of glass and crystal that chimed in a wind none of them felt. In the distance a soft, distorted music played ferried by the sound of chattering laughter, and on the air hung an intoxicating sweet scent that made their mouths water and their heads woozy. They had been walking down it for an hour and a minute when the voice of the Captain sounded behind them, paralysing them with fear and obedience, hatred and guilty love.

Prince had bargained for mercy. None of them were surprised.

It took every ounce of will for Shepard to force her eyes open and her legs to stand, pulling at Bright-Eyed Sam's sleeve and pushing him forward.

"Move!" she shouted, as Sam stumbled forward and started to run. "Keep running!"

Whirling on the spot she ran to Garthog, who remained transfixed where he was and his eyes fixed upon the Gates of Arcadia, shining with pearly white light behind them. Although they had walked for what must have been a few miles, they stood large and inviting as though they were only a hundred footsteps away. The Beast trembled beneath her touch, his red-brown fur drenched with cold sweat that reeked of fear.

"Garthog!" she said, pulling him back by the shoulder, although she may as well have been coaxing movement from a statue. "We have to keep moving!"

But from him came no reply.

Fear crept into Shepard's gut like the icy fingers of Frost, her voice cracking as tried to get Garthog to move. Even when she infused glamour into her words and spoke as she would when leading reluctant changelings into battle she brooked no response. Thus in desperation she spoke as They might, calling upon her Gentrified bearings to cow Garthog into submission, feeling her mind begin to strain from pressure.

She could feel Him approaching. A wind was picking up, snatching at her hair and clothes, carrying with it the stench of ozone and fire. It howled like the calls of ravenous beasts and the air grew chilled with beat of her heart.

The Captain was angry.

It was then that she heard a new noise rising over the ruckus, a deep guttural growl like the grinding of stone against stone. Louder it grew and it wasn't until it was drilling into her ears that she realised that it was coming from Garthog's throat.

The Beast's eyes were dilated, his sharp teeth bared and drool dripping from black lips pulled tight against his fangs.

Shepard's teeth clenched, her fingers clawing into his thick hide. "Garthog, no! Keep with me!"

But he was already beyond words. Shepard should have seen it from the beginning, when Kendra gave herself to the Ship in exchange for safe passage to the Hedge for the others. His mind had gone with her. Now there was nothing but Beast piloting his body and it was terrified beyond all knowing. Terrified and angry and being hunted. So it made one of only two choices.

It chose to fight.

With a surge of muscle and a primal roar of rage Garthog ripped himself from Shepard's grasp and plunged back towards the Gates, ignoring Shepard's cries to return. Like a russet cannon ball he bounded towards the slowly emerging figure, terrible, cold and beautiful like the stars, and threw himself upon him, leaping upwards with one great bound from his strong legs.

In that space of time, Garthog seemed to move so sluggishly in comparison to the tall, fair shape of the Captain, his armour of jagged starlight gleaming and his long white hair flowing behind him almost as though he was walking through a soft breeze. His bright dispassionate eyes fell upon the form of Garthog, who He used to keep as a guard in the lower decks against hobs and stowaways, and His lips quirked just a little as though with amusement, disgust, contempt or, more likely, all three. In the time it took for the great lumbering form to cross the Road towards Him, the Captain had already drawn his sword and waited, almost as though he was simply anticipating the arrival of a late shuttle. The blade was long and elegant and sharp, with all the terrible beauty of a star or a coiled serpent. Fey energy crackled along its edge and its surface was polished like a mirror.

Garthog had barely left the ground before, with one lazy sweep of His sword, he was cut in twain and sent splattering against the white gold cobbles of the Straight Road, staining them dark scarlet. The gore steamed slightly in the frigid air, Garthog's face twisted into a horrible snarling death mask. The stench of his insides stung Shepard's nostrils.

The Captain harrumphed, pulled a long white handkerchief of what looked like silk from His pocket, and wiped His blade clean until it shone once more. Then He focused His piercing gaze on Shepard.

What else could she have done? She broke and fled into the Deep Hedge.

)O(

_They tore at her. They tore at her clothes, at her flesh, at her bones and at her soul. Blood poured down her arms and legs and into her eyes in hot red rivers, the bitter coppery tang strong in her mouth. With each tear she could feel just a small piece of her catch and hold, waving flame like yet unseen on the points of each thorn._

_Yet still she kept running. Why she did she had long since forgotten._

_She couldn't even remember what it was she was running to. All she could remember, burning in the back of her mind like a softly glowing ember in the cooling ashes of an extinguished fire, was that she had something important to do there. That she had to return. That, somehow, she needed to escape these thorns and these brambles and get home._

_If she could only find the way._

)O(

"Are you sure you're leading us in the right direction?"

Miranda's voice was sharp and pompous, causing the fur on the back of Fraxinus' neck to bristle with barely suppressed irritation as he carefully made his way through the trod. That was the third time she'd asked that question and Fraxinus was quite certain he gave this answer twice before.

"I swore an oath, didn't I?"

"Yes, you swore an oath that you'd help us. But that doesn't mean you know where you're going."

"What do you want me to do? Stop a passing hobgoblin and ask directions?"

"It's better than what you're doing currently, which to me looks an awful lot like aimlessly blundering around in this thicket."

Fraxinus snorted and shot a dark, dangerous look over his shoulder at the woman behind him, her dark hair flowing immaculately around her face like a mane of midnight and her contrastingly white Cerberus uniform clinging to her voluptuous figure in a way that, usually, would have been very pleasing to him indeed. Normally such a woman would have had Fraxinus falling over himself to win her attention, especially with a backside like hers, but that was before she forced him to take her on a guided tour through the Hedge.

He really had to learn to stop thinking with his dick.

"For the last time, _mortal_," Fraxinus spat, causing Miranda's lips to curl up in a sneer. "I know where I'm going. If you don't trust me, then feel free to go off by yourself. See how well you find your way then."

She didn't of course. Both knew full well what would happen if anything that wasn't a changeling, a hobgoblin or one of Them wandered off on their own into the Hedge. Getting lost wasn't so much a case as if but for how long and how much you'd lose in the meantime. You'd never find your way back out again, of course, but chances were something would find _you_ sooner or later. If you had the sort of luck that would net you three consecutive wins on the galactic lottery, you just might have a benign changeling or hob run into you. If you had the regular luck however…

Fraxinus snorted and continued moving, picking his way through the thorns carefully and examining the trail before him. Like most trods this far into the Hedge, the place had a wild, overgrown look, like a forest trail that was seldom used by anything that walked on two legs. The light was muted, reminiscent of the twilight of late evening, and Fraxinus had to light the way with an old fashioned candle-lit lantern. Anything more up-to-date would have been unreliable at best. The omnitool on his wrist was useless out here, plus knowing his luck he'd receive a very unwelcome message on it as well. The thorns, meanwhile, were everywhere, running across the pathway in huge, solid clumps that Fraxinus and his charge had to crawl under or sidle around. Once they were so thick that they had to be removed, Fraxinus pulling from its sling a large, sharp hand axe to hack away at the wood and pull it apart bit by bit.

Miranda could have removed it herself in about as much time as it took to sneeze, of course, but they didn't want to have to use _that_ unless they had to. There was no telling what attention it may draw.

Around them the constant chattering and chittering of unseen creatures scurrying through the brambles provided something of an uneasy backdrop to the general atmosphere of the Deep Hedge. Nothing ever actually made itself known, neither by moving out into the open or (thankfully) leaping upon them in an ambush. But Fraxinus knew full well the feeling of being stalked, and he was getting it by the truckload. Something out there was just waiting for the right opportunity.

Eventually they came to another crossroads, the trod branching off in several directions within a fairly broad clearing, an area Fraxinus got the impression had been deliberately cleared by enterprising hobs or changelings for resting. It was there he stopped, placed the lantern down and hunkered down onto his haunches, closing his eyes and drawing on a Contract.

Miranda, who'd seen him do this several times, stopped, folded her arms and waited with forced patience, her skin-tight uniform squeaking slightly as she moved.

The Contract fired without a hitch, much to Fraxinus' relief, and as always he gradually fell into a form of mindless Zen state, slowing his rational thought process and falling back more and more onto the primal, instinctive part of his mind. It wasn't quite meditation, more the muting of those parts of his brains that distracted from the inner voices of intuition, instinct and drive. Those kinds of thought that, even when your gut tells you not to proceed, rationalises the danger away even as the hunter hunkers down in the bushes, your head square in his sights. With each beat of his heart, he muted his thoughts and stopped thinking, letting the _Wyrd_ speak to him without interference from his head. Without being told anything, Fraxinus got the impression that he'd be allowed three questions this time and so dedicated a small portion of his brain to mulling over what those questions should be. Slowly he let the questions he needed float to the surface of his mind, like the slowly rising silver form of a fish beneath the surface of dark water.

_Down which pathway does Commander Shepard lie?_

_How far away is she?_

_What dangers are there down that pathway?_

There were no words or images, as some changelings who initiate the first Clause of the Contract of Dreams sometimes have. Fraxinus never really went for that kind of flashy magic, which to him was more the domain of the Fairest or Elementals anyway. Instead all he got was a strange sense of knowing, a gut-sensation that told him all he needed. He'd have to take the pathway furthest to the right and walk down for around half an hour, and the journey for the most part was safe. Or at least as safe as you can get while travelling through the Deep Hedge. Fraxinus also got the dim inclination, more from experience than from the Contract, that that relative safety was only applicable at that very moment. Chances are the situation may have changed during their trek down it.

With his path secured once more, Fraxinus gently brought himself back to rationality and opened his eyes, where he beheld Miranda looking at him as though he was the world's biggest idiot.

"Finished?" she asked, tapping her foot. "We can't keep stopping every five minutes like this. Time is short."

"Which is why I'm stopping. We'd waste more time blundering around in the Hedge if I don't have any idea where she is."

"I thought you said you knew where you were going?"

"Shut it!"

Fraxinus turned sharply and headed down the pathway, gnashing his flat, wide teeth together and snorting again, ears flat. To his relief Miranda spoke no more, soundlessly falling in behind him and sticking close. Not for the first time the thought of running off and leaving the Ice Queen stranded here crossed his mind, but as it usually did the idea filled him with deep-seated sense of revulsion, no matter how much of a smart-mouthed bitchcow the Cerberus operative proved to be. He'd sooner saw on of his own horns off that start walking down that particular road.

They walked for another twenty minutes or so, carefully edging round the thorns and clambering up steep rises, listening out always for the slightest sign of trouble. It was then that Fraxinus caught a scent on the breeze, his ears flicking as his deep nostrils drank in the smell deeply. With that he stopped, raising his fist to signal Miranda to do so as well. It had the sickly sweet tang of Arcadia to it, along with sulphur and hot metal. Then, buried beneath, Fraxinus caught the whiff of sweat and fear.

Of those the True Fae were capable of neither.

"Something's up ahead," he murmured. "Not one of Them."

To Miranda's credit, she knew when to be quiet and when to be professional. "Is it dangerous?" she asked.

"Could be. Don't think it's a hob."

Miranda gave him a pointed look. "Is it her?"

Fraxinus paused, sniffing again, although since he had no idea what Shepard would smell like now that she'd spent what may as well have been an eternity in Faerie he had no idea what good it would do.

"Not sure."

If Miranda was irritated, hopeful or anxious, then she showed no indication of it. Instead she looked shrewdly down the path, her dark eyes having a cold, calculating feel to them, as though she were estimating how likely it would be that they might run into trouble. They'd already faced off one pack of briar wolves and a tribe of hobgoblins already, Fraxinus taking the bulk of the fighting as Miranda's capabilities were somewhat reduced in the Hedge. Even then, Fraxinus was impressed by how capably she defended herself and by how well she was keeping her head.

"There's only one way to find out, I suppose. Lead the way. I'll make sure we're not surrounded."

Nodding, Fraxinus slipped his bow off of his shoulder and pulled an arrow from its quiver, nocking it to the string with one easy practised movement. The tension of the bowstring was comforting in its familiarity, as were the bristly feels of the flight and the worn, polished wood. It was amazing how much braver someone could become when a weapon was placed in their hands, and Fraxinus was no different.

"Let's go," he said, and with that they crept onwards.

)O(

_Faces swam up into her consciousness. So many faces. Stern faces, soft faces, angry faces, mournful faces, faces of friends, faces of enemies and faces that were not faces at all._

_Two faces, however, she did not recognise. Nor their voices. Nor their intent._

_The bullish one came first, dark-furred and strong armed, who plucked her like a ripe fruit from the brambles. Then came the human one, pale faced and raven haired, her features beautiful and cold like Theirs, yet clearly mortal. Her eyes burned, however, burned with a knowledge and understanding and power that hurt. They talked of her in hushed voices, before the bullish one slung her over his shoulder effortlessly and took her away from her resting place._

_Then came movement and after them bright lights, walls of shining metal and more faces. There was prodding everywhere, in her body and her mind and her soul, and then all went dark and silent._

_Her dreams were dominated by Him._


	5. Waking Dreams

_Soft sunlight peered through the dapples leaves overhead, casting warm tendrils on her face that contrasted with the coolness of the soil beneath her. The tree above stretched higher than the bulkheads of the ship, its long brown limbs reaching out every way, so that its twig fingers looked to be trying to snatch the sun's rays from the air. The cool wind that blew across from the south rustled the leaves, and for a moment she was able to imagine that the tree was trying to talk to her._

_Those moments were rare, to be able to leave the shell of her ship and walk upon a planet's surface. It was rarer still for her to be able to walk beneath the planet's sky with no respirator or environmental suit. The tree above her was like nothing else she'd be able to see on a ship; large and green and organic. It was a complex piece of natural respiratory machinery, pumping water and nutrients from the soil with long, deep roots and gushing out pure, clear oxygen from its countless leaves. The sap gurgled beneath its mottled bark, and within its leaves sunlight and water were converted into sugary food with an efficiency only Nature could be capable of. It was a mechanism every bit as marvellous as the engines of the SSV Iwo Jima. Every bit as complex and every bit as beautiful. She marvelled at it._

_For a moment she lay there beneath its arms, her eyes closed and breathing deep, listening to the birds singing unseen amongst the foliage. Peace settled._

_Then the light went out and the air grew cold._

_When she opened her eyes the tree was gone, replaced by a long metallic pillar that merged almost organically into the ceiling, studded with jewels and precious metals, from which hung a light made from a large phosphorous mushroom the size of her head. Gone also were the song birds, in their place hanging the constant throbbing _thud-thud-thud_ of the Ship's beating heart, and the distant sounds of screams and wailing from the new recruits on the crewdeck._

_The light cast by the mushroom was not warm, but rather murky and cold, nor did it illuminate the shadows so much as it made them thicker, stronger and more apparent. Beyond its gloom she could dimly make out scuttling, half-seen shapes, although whether they hostile, dangerous or both she had no way of knowing._

_Then a growing red light appeared in the distance, like a great bonfire had sprouted legs and started to stride towards her. On the air she caught the smell of ozone and hot iron, carried with the sound of a crackling sword and pounding boots. The flick of a long cloak made from the fabric of the Void and the clutter of medals and decorations from an eternity of War._

_It called to her._

_YOU HAVE FAILED ME, SHEPARD._

_The world dropped from her feet, her heart falling through her stomach as she got to her knees and clasped her hands together to beg. It would do no good of course, for the Captain was angry, and mercy was as alien to Him as He was to her. It would be the Void for sure, or else white-hot hooks piercing her eyelids or ravenous rodents being fed into her belly. If she was lucky. She could just as easily be taken and turned into a part of the Ship itself, her skin and bones transfigured into something like metal as she was slowly fused into the ceiling as a beam, or her eyes torn out to be used as security cameras, or her voice and ears taken to relay orders across the Ship._

_All these thoughts ran through her mind, which threatened to shatter from the strain, that strain increasing and increasing as the Captain slowly came into her view, his eyes blazing like the hearts of stars. Then-_

No. You're safe. This is just a dream. You're safe.

_Then darkness._

_The next time she dreamed of the Ship was in the midst of a great fight, the Slender Man having infiltrated the hull and started stalking Its crew down the dark corridors and rooms. They had already lost four changelings and six hobs, the poor creatures dragged back to Its dark domain to whatever fate the Slender Man had in store for them. The very Ship was infected, the shadows becoming marked and difficult to peer through, each column and window and door and shadow morphing into His shape, His impossibly long arms stretching out as though seeking embrace._

_Shepard had been sent to deal with Him, to drive Him off and safeguard the Captain's crew. With her were six others, all armed and fearful. None expected to survive. What hope had they against one of the Lords and Ladies?_

_They had come to the Engine Bay, where Wizened, Beasts and Darklings toiled ceaselessly to keep the Ship stoked and fed, a place with plenty of dark corners for the Slender Man to hide. By the time they arrived a Wizened had already gone missing, wandering on his own to gather fuel, never to return. They pressed on noiselessly, hopeful only of Death._

_For both a century and an hour they searched, coming up with nothing, until at last they found Him standing directly behind where they had entered a coal shed, His pale featureless head and long willowy limbs already focused on them, silent and serene. They moaned with terror, unable to resist_

_Shepard felt stick-like arms wrap tightly around her, dragging her forward to-_

No. This isn't real. You're safe.

_Before her world dissolved once more into darkness, Shepard swore she glanced a new figure peering at her from the shadows, and found him familiar for a reason she couldn't quite put her finger on. All she could see before he disappeared was a bull's head and a white-and-black uniform that was not like any she'd seen the crew wearing, and then he was gone, along with everything else._

_That would not be the last time she saw him. Whenever she started seeing visions of the Ship, of the Captain or Arcadia he would suddenly appear again, always saying and doing the same thing._

No. This is just a dream. You're safe.

No. You're not in the Void. You're dreaming. You're safe.

No. It hasn't got you anymore. You're safe. You're free.

_Then the dream would fade and Shepard was left in darkness again. It did not take long for Shepard to realise that, during these periods of darkness, she didn't have to wait for a dream to reassert itself. After the ninth time of being pulled from her recollections of Arcadia, she suddenly found herself wistful for the Normandy, the ship that had carried her so far and through so much, only to have been destroyed at the hands of that unknown ship and its unknown crew. How the memory came to her she could not say, but she found it invigorated her and gave her strength. As though the chance to focus on something other than her Durance helped ease the pain of it all. No sooner had she started to recall it, from the glossy-clean cafeteria that smelled eternally of coffee and cooking, to the shimmering hologram on the CIC showing a minute replica of the galaxy, hers to explore as she saw fit, that the mistform of the Normandy slowly began to coalesce before her._

_It started with the galaxy map, the smoky, star-studded tendrils of the Milky Way forming like smoky incense from a large, circular projection unit surrounded by computers, monitors and the shadowy figures of dimly-remembered men and women. It expanded from there, a blot of ink on wet paper, filling out the walls and the ceiling, the pilot's cockpit dead ahead of her and the elevator and communications room dead behind. Faceless armoured marines appeared, with equally featureless crew in Alliance Navy fatigues bustling about purposefully, although whenever Shepard focused her attention on them it soon became apparent that they weren't actually doing anything. They just circled the CIC endlessly, occasionally stopping to go in the other direction, or pausing to do _something_ that appeared to have no function or purpose._

_When she looked down Shepard realised she was in her old Alliance fatigues herself, although her body was still the willowy, elf-like being that she had become since…_

_The Normandy flickered, the shadows darkening and the ship's appearance shifting from manufactured to organic, the steady thump-thump-thump of a distantly beating heart growing louder in the distance and Shepard quickly forced her mind away from That Place. She started focusing instead on remembering more details about the Normandy. Her Normandy. The blocky frame of the Mako, the sleek lines of the hull, the bright loud, the smell of gun oil by the armoury, and mechanical clamour of the Tantalus Drive engine. Like a decorator with an empty room, Shepard started refilling blank details as best as she could recall. Slowly the shadows receded and the ship once again looked as though it had been welded and bolted together rather than grown. The constant beating grew silent._

_Small victories. She had her ship back, she supposed, and that was something. If anything exploring the Normandy, even if it was only the memory of the Normandy, made her feel somewhat giddy. For what seemed like hours she explored every nook and cranny of her lost ship, placing new marks and embellishments to it whenever a new memory surfaced. Where no memories arose, the ship was blurred, a computer generated image that had not yet rendered. Shepard soon learned she did not have to remember exactly; the ship morphed and adjusted to suit her needs, preferences and desires. Nevertheless, she strove for accuracy. Faces and voices were given to members of the crew she could remember. Her pilot, Joker, Ash down in the cargo deck by the armoury, Kaiden within the mess deck, Navigator Pressley by his post in the CIC…_

_The hulking shadow in the corner of the cargo deck she couldn't place, nor the slim, hooded (?) form by the Tantalus Drive next to Lt. Adams, the chief engineer. A strange avian creature by the Mako mystified her as well, as did the shadow of a woman within the Infirmary, and a lonely female figure with what looked like tentacles instead of hair. The same for several other figures whose names, faces and voices she just could not place no matter how hard she wracked her brain. It filled her with a great sense of despair._

_The sense intensified when Shepard realised that all she was doing was creating a shade of her true life, a hallucination. Her thoughts returned to the strange bull-headed figure who lingered constantly out of sight at the edges of her dreams._

This isn't real. _He had always said that._ You're dreaming. This is all a dream.

_It was all just a dream. But why couldn't she wake up?_

_Shepard leaned against the bulwark, against which the ghost of her old locker was attached, and slid down to the floor, pushing her legs out and staring at a hazy representation of the ceiling, a heavy sigh escaping her. She was trapped within a prison of her own making, a prison that existed solely within her own head. _

_Or perhaps she had died, all that time ago (years? decades? centuries?) when the real Normandy had been destroyed, and she was trapped in some sort of Hell or Purgatory. Maybe it was just her brain being starved of oxygen and vividly flooding itself with junk information and stimuli as it slowly died, each thought stretching out infinitely. Perhaps the constant black outs in her dreams were a sign that the end was nigh and oblivion awaited._

_Shepard relished the thought. It would be good to die at last._

_She sat there for what must have been a good half hour - if time had any place within her own little shadow-Normandy - before she finally grew restless and pulled herself to her feet._

_It was then that she saw the horned figure, standing directly opposite her by the door to the Captain's quarters. He wasn't alone this time either._

_In full view for the first time, Shepard could see he was large and broad, and she at once linked his appearance to that of the Minotaur of Knossos, the ancient Greek monster that stalked the Labyrinth until it was slain by the Athenian hero, Theseus. Its fur was jet black although most of that was covered by a black and white uniform consisting of a form-fitting t-shirt and somewhat looser trousers. Upon the breast was an orange symbol that resembled a diamond or a downward pointing pincer with mandibles. Shepard found it oddly familiar._

_Behind it stood another apparition, this one tall and somehow foreboding, despite the fact that he was obviously human. His form took that of a handsome, middle-aged man in a smart black suit, which he wore along with a lazy, carefree expression that stank of self-assurance. That wasn't what immediately caught Shepard's attention though; what she was drawn to first were his eyes. She'd heard eyes be described as "steely" or "piercing" before, but never had she encountered a pair that truly warranted those adjectives as much as the ones she beheld then. They shone a little with their own light, looking completely alien and synthetic. It was hard not to look deep into them and, as she did, she swore that the man looked deep into her in turn._

_She found that disconcertingly like another breed of being she knew and that thought filled her with cold dread. They hadn't recaptured her surely?_

_Like a deer that had spotted its hunter Shepard glanced both directions for an escape route, but no sooner had she done so that the human raised its hand towards her and smirked._

"Time to wake up, Shepard," _he said._ "You've been sleeping long enough."

)O(

_The Spectres are an ideal…a symbol. The embodiment of courage…determination…and self-reliance. They are the right hand of the Council. Instruments of our will…_

)O(

Like rising from the waters of a hot bath that she'd been soaking in, Shepard gradually found herself moving to wakefulness, her head groggy and feeling as though it had been wrapped within a warm blanket. Her eyes refused to open at first and may as well have been made from lead, yet gradually she peeled each eyelid free and beheld the world at last. Initially all she could see where blurred shapes and indistinct shadows, so much so that she wondered whether she had truly awoken at all, but instead had simply entered another dreamscape.

Then they sharpened and all became clear. She could feel the soft warmth of a blanket draped over her and hear the hum of a light overhead. She could also hear something else stir nearby, the soft hiss of material shifting. There were other noises; electronic blips, the subdued murmuring of conversation, the gush of a ventilator. The air had the sterile, recycled smell of a ship or a space station, and the bed beneath her appeared to be padded with a firm, wobbly gel covered with soft spandex.

Above all she could see were electrical lights, shining down oppressively at her from a ceiling that looked to be made of uniform square tiles of some sort of metal. Her vision swayed drunkenly as she tried to move her head, her eyes straining to keep track of the motion and making her feel slightly sick. Briefly, at the periphery of her vision, she saw frantic movement, indistinct figures bustling to and fro, yet Shepard did not trust her stomach enough to try and focus her attention to quickly at it.

There was a sharp medicinal smell in the air, underlain with a slight whiff of strong bleach.

"Ma'am…she's waking up…!" the voice was feminine, young and anxious.

"What? Let me see…! How are her diagnostics?" Another woman. Confident, authoritative, professional.

"Running stable so far…breathing is a little erratic and her pulse is a little high, but nothing that warrants concern. Scans seem ordinary…"

Shepard groaned and tried to move, yet found her limbs would not respond. The most she managed was to stir slightly beneath whatever it was that was covering her. She felt weak and tired, and her stomach clawed at itself with a ravenous hunger. When had she last eaten? It couldn't have been, but it felt as though she had not eaten for years. Perhaps if she did give way to nausea, then, she wouldn't get as much down herself. Shepard's mouth was also dry and her throat felt scratchy, the dehydration probably not helping the deep, steady pounding in her head in the slightest, a hangover lacking the courtesy to arrive without an adequate shore leave beforehand.

"Operative Lawson, I am quite capable of running my own infirmary," a third voice suddenly said, wise, maternal and strangely familiar. Her accent was not unlike the second's, yet softer and less broad. "I fail to see how-"

"I wish to speak with Shepard when she's woken."

"Out of the question. She is far too in need of recovery before you start interrogating her."

So sluggish were her thoughts that a full minute must have passed before she suddenly remembered how she came to be in that room. It all flashed to her like a bolt of lightning, causing her to jolt violently at the abrupt recollection of what had occurred to her in both an eternity and an instant. The Ship, the Captain, the Void, the repulsion of boarding attempts, the elimination of stowaways, joining her Captain on "recruitment" missions, standing atop a burning wall, her sabre pointed towards a distant tower of pale pink stone perched atop an impossibly tall crag of rock and overlooking a literally emerald sea, her words flowing like liquid music from her mouth as she inspired her crewmates to victory. She remembered her Captain's face contorted with fury as she fled from Garthog's carcass and the shining Gates of Arcadia, the mad dash into the brambles of the Hedge and how the thorns had torn her apart. She remembered the two figures, dreamlike and mist-formed, who had approached and took her away.

The Shadow-Normandy and its ghostly crew of half-remembered faces was already fading fast like a summer mist, the last thing she remembered being the figure with unnatural eyes reaching out towards her.

Energy born from panic and desperation flowed into her weary muscles, instincts honed from a thousand battles fought between the imaginations and egos of gods firing all at once. Shepard awoke for the first time in what seemed like centuries.

She leapt cat-like from the bed she had been laid across, throwing the blanket to one side and grabbing frantically for something to use as a weapon. Her hands brushed against air, no conveniently placed implements to be found within grasping distance, and scanned quickly her surroundings, her brain calculating at speeds only made possible by the threat of pain, or death, or worse.

The room was small and oblong, made almost entirely of metal and plastics and split down the centre by a walkway. On one side was a row of beds, on one of which Shepard was now crouched, tensed like a coil pressed down and ready to be released, and on the other a desk and a long row of monitors and strange machines that Shepard suddenly recognised as medical equipment. On various monitors she could see pictures of skulls, shadow representations of a brain and a series of other readouts. On both of the far ends of the room she could see a single door, a small square of red light to the dead centre of it. Next to the door on her right, she noticed a single locker coloured a bright orange and white affixed to the wall.

There were three figures in the room…no four. Three of them were arrayed around her in a variety of stances, all of shock and focused directly at her, and of a variety of ages. One could have been no more than twenty, with dark skin the colour of strong coffee and her black hair tied back into a tight, military bun. Her large, almond-shaped eyes were fearful and she seemed to be preparing to flee towards one of the doors. The second was the oldest in the room, her iron grey hair cut short so that it hung past her ears and her eyes, although startled, betraying no fright. Her hands were raised and her body was facing Shepard in full, apparently trying to calm her down. Her mouth moved as she spoke, uttering repeatedly that everything was all right and to calm down. Both wore matching one-piece uniforms, split diagonally into black and white. The third stood slightly to the back, her dark hair swept backwards behind her to frame a strong, pale face that held two eyes that flashed with some deep, hidden energy. If the other two were panicked, she was cool and professional, standing confidently as she slowly raised a single hand towards her, her fingers grasping. Her uniform was a single-piece catsuit, a white latex torso with black limbs.

It was the fourth figure, however, that caught Shepard's attention.

It was hulking, huge and covered in hair. Two long horns curved from its long head, broad at the base and wickedly sharp at the tips, while its form was heavily muscled and brutish. The bovine head was staring at its hooves as they dangled off the side of the bed upon which it was sitting, elbows resting against knees and its torso hunched over as though it was tired and trying to catch its breath. However even as she focused on it, she could see its long ears flick upwards and the broad muzzle slowly raise to look at her. It too wore a uniform reminiscent of the third woman's. Very faintly, like a hazy overlaying image, she could just about make out another, slightly smaller figure occupying the same space, a human male with black hair.

She suddenly recognised it as the same figure that so often had haunted her dreams of late. There was no mistaking another changeling, a Beast most likely, and its loyalties and intentions were uncertain. That made it dangerous. Shepard learned a long time ago to beware figures that spoke to you in dreams.

Making a quick estimation in her head, she judged the Beast the most dangerous, and immediately prepared herself to disable it as quickly as possible. It looked top-heavy and it seemed to be struggling to keep itself together, apparently not as quick to recover as she had been. If she tackled it at the torso she may knock it back over the bed, stunning it long enough for her to see to the three other figures. They did not look to be as strong - possibly fresh mortals who had not yet been in Faerie long enough to mutate - but Shepard kept her attention on them as well in case she was nastily surprised.

As her legs released their built up tension, launching her through the air from the bed and towards the Beast, she suddenly realised that she was right to be suspicious of them but that she had not been nearly suspicious enough. As the air tussled at her hair and brushed against her skin, the Beast raising too slowly to stop her, she suddenly felt herself slam into something that stopped her dead in her flight. The sudden change of velocity caused her head to snap backwards painfully, the whiplash making her vision flash white, and before she knew it she was dangling in the air, held aloft by some invisible force.

Her legs kicked in a futile effort to release herself, Shepard suddenly conscious of wearing a simple mint green medical gown, and she screamed out in frustration. Then that was stopped too, her larynx straining under her outcry yet nevertheless issuing no noise no matter how hard she tried. It was though someone had pressed a mute button on her.

She glanced backwards, eyes wide and frantic, and saw the third woman looking at her intently. The energy Shepard could somehow sense coming off her was all she needed to know who was responsible, although how she could not say. This was no Contract or Faerie magic. It seemed stronger, purer and more fundamental somehow. Even so, the sheer fact that it could happen at all was more than enough to panic her further.

If further evidence was needed, she got it. The dark-haired woman casually flicked a stray lock back and adopted a disdainful expression.

"That's better," she said.

The eldest woman shot her a heated look. "Have you taken leave of your senses, Operative Lawson?" she snapped. "You could have injured her!"

"But I didn't. I knew what I was doing, Doctor."

The other let out an exasperated noise before turning to face Shepard again, who tensed within her invisible bindings and tried to retreat. Even so, now that Shepard had a chance to see her more closely something clicked in her head.

_I know this woman._

"Commander Shepard? Can you hear me? It's me, Dr Chakwas…I was the Chief Medical Officer back on the _Normandy_, do you remember? We served for nearly a year together. Do you remember the SSV _Normandy_?"

It came back to her slowly, like an old 20th century photo developing, the image gradually manifesting in her head. She knew that woman. Dr Karen Chakwas, the Chief Medical Officer, the matronly woman who occupied the infirmary and who spent most of her days picking rounds from out the torsos and limbs of unlucky marines (mostly Shepard), slapping medigel onto bad burns after operations (mostly Shepard), and righting broken bones so that they could heal properly (mostly Shepard's). She remembered those soft grey-green eyes rolling whenever Shepard meekly hobbled into her domain after another mission, the soft peel of her laughter as she watched shaking her head at the antics of the crew and the patient, calm bedside manner with which she treated everyone who sought her care.

Shepard paused, frowning. It could be a trick. It was always a trick. But there she was, flesh and blood, with not a whiff of glamour about her. The room around her didn't beat with the heart of the Ship, nor did Shepard see any other signs of Arcadia around her. She tried to - there was usually some sense of the Other Place around - but if there was it was far too well hidden for to make out. Even so…Shepard wanted to believe it was Chakwas. She'd been running for too long. Just to stop and collapse and let her old comrade once again take her in, tut at her hurt and make it all better.

It was childish and unprofessional, but Shepard didn't have the strength to care anymore.

She sagged up in the air and, at a nod from Chakwas, was slowly lowered onto the floor. As though boneless, Shepard slumped forward and let Dr Chakwas catch her.

"Shepard! It _is_ you! My God, Commander, what happened to you?"

_Commander_. That title somehow strengthened her and made her feel real. More real than she had ever felt before. It was like a confirmation of who she was. Some sort of summation of her nature and drive. The mere thought filled her with memories of a life she had for the longest time thought had long since been lost forever.

The youngest woman knelt beside her, holding up a strange device that glowed with orange light, an omnitool Shepard suddenly recalled, and waved it over her with the sound of electronic whirring.

"Her vitals are fine, for the most part," the woman said, glancing up and placing a hand on Shepard's shoulder to keep her steady. "Her pulse and breathing are a little faster than normal, but I think that's understandable, and I can't see any signs of internal injuries or breakages."

"No physical trauma at all?"

"If so, I'm not picking it up."

Chakwas looked at Shepard as though she were looking at a ghost, her eyes wide and full of questions. Shepard could see how badly she wished to voice them, but the Doctor managed to keep herself restrained and instead carefully assisted Shepard to her feet and sat her on the bed.

"How is she?" the dark-haired woman asked. "Is she stable?"

"From what I can see, but I'll need to make a more in-depth examination to be absolutely sure. I recommend keeping her in for a few days so I can check for any unforeseen complications, and I must _ask_, Operative Lawson, that you don't send her out into the field for at least another fortnight."

"We have a week. Please ensure that Commander Shepard is ready to be briefed by then. She's in your hands now, Dr Chakwas."

The woman, Operative Lawson, turned to Shepard and gave her curt nod of the head. "I hope to see you recovered soon, Commander," she said in clipped, business-like tones. "We have much to discuss."

With that she turned on her heels and walked out of the door. Shepard at once had the vague impression that she didn't much like her.

Chakwas seemed to echo those sentiments through her expression. "That woman needs to learn that you are not a tool that can be used and discarded," she muttered. "Fraxinus! Have you woken up yet?"

"Kinda," came a deep, familiar rumble. Shepard turned her head slightly to see the Beast standing and stretching, as though he'd just gotten up from a long nap.

"Then get out of my infirmary. I need to make sure the Commander is in fit shape. Will you be able to help me with her…condition…later?"

The Beast rolled his neck until it popped, before nodding his head and jabbing a thumb behind him. "I'll need to pick up some things to help us, but I shouldn't take long. When will you need me?"

"If you could report here at 1400 hours, that would be fine. Now please leave. Nurse, could you find Shepard's medical files for me? They should be on a holopad on the desk."

The Beast trailed out of the infirmary, glancing towards Shepard as he passed. He gave her a broad grin and a small wave as he did so, the expression looking odd coming from what was otherwise a bull's head. Absent-mindedly Shepard returned it, wincing as she turned her attention towards the only face she truly recognised.

"Dr Chakwas…?" Shepard said, struck by how weak her voice sounded.

"Yes, Commander?"

"Just…just what happened to me?"


	6. Tea and Fruit

_**Author's Note: Simply because I'm aware that there's a lot of things going on that require adequate explanation, this chapter is dedicated to explaining what exactly is going on and what has gone on before. In most meaningful senses, this is the Exposition Chapter of Exposition. As I dislike this method of story-telling, in the future I may decide to start adding "Codex" entries at the end of each chapter to explain World of Darkness concepts and how they apply to the Mass Effect Universe.**_

_**If anyone has anything in particular they'd like explained, don't hesitate to say as such in the Review section, or else in a PM to myself!**_

_**Now on with the As You Know information dumping…**_

)O(

The movements were elegant, practised and almost automatic, her hands graceful dancers performing a complex routine that helped distract from the world around them. First they picked up the teapot, an antique vessel made from bone china displaying the image of a handsome, balding middle-aged man staring profoundly towards the spout, dressed in old British military regalia against a peaceful countryside scene. They tilted it over one of the cups, matching in design, and poured through the tea strainers a dark brown liquid that steamed in the air, the soft fragrance the tea wafting up the nostrils and refreshing the mind. The soft gurgle of it filling the cup was almost like accompanying music to the performance, causing the ears to twitch. Once both cups were full, the teapot was placed gently to one side, almost respectfully, an old servant allowed to rest, his duty fulfilled. Then came the sugar; white, granulated and two spoonfuls each, stirred in well with the soft clink of metal against ceramic. The granules hissed as they were deposited into the warm water, slowly fading as they were dissolved. Finally, fashionably late, the milk was served. A stretching coiled finger of ivory white, blossoming like a chocolate brown cloud across the black surface of the beverage. It was stirred in twice, the spoon tapped softly against the rim before being placed onto a napkin on the table. The vessel it was served in bore the image of a woman, with dark eyes, silvery streaks in her hair and a warm smile, wearing a white and gold dress and a silver jewel-studded tiara in her hair. Behind her was a lake filled with swans, a small gazebo rising on the furthest shore.

Chakwas didn't say a word, the ritual obviously being too sacred for talk. Instead she served her tea, offered Shepard a plate of biscuits and then leaned back in her seat, sipping quietly with the saucer held just above her breast. Her eyes never left her patient, yet she still said nothing. Around them all that could be heard was the omnipresent hum of the lights over the head, and the distant gushing of the ventilation system. Somewhere outside the room, Shepard thought she could hear conversation, although the voices were so muffled that she couldn't even tell the gender of whoever was speaking.

For the silence Shepard was grateful; she wasn't sure what exactly she could say. Her mind was still frozen, unable to process what was happening. She couldn't remember the last time she felt like this, her thoughts in overdrive and her body operating on autopilot. Perhaps shortly after the Blitz, where Shepard recalled staggering amongst the jubilant defenders not quite able to believe that, somehow, the batarians had been driven off and the Alliance was soaring overhead to deal with stragglers. Although that daze had left a more favourable emotion than what she was feeling. Back then she felt like a balloon caught on a thermal, letting it carry her up until she was lighter than air.

Now? She felt leaden. Barely able to function. It was all she could do to keep upright. She just wanted to lie down and forget for a moment she even existed.

The silence stretched out for a while, Chakwas sipping her tea while Shepard left hers where it was, the warm cup and saucer forgotten in her shaking hands. Besides, Shepard was never one for tea. She preferred the stronger kick and bitter aftertaste of a good coffee. Real coffee if she could get it, but the synthetic stuff still did the trick more often than not. The fine china rattled slightly despite her attempts to still herself, so Shepard placed the cup and saucer down and her hands on her lap, her legs together and her head bowed. Eyes remained fixed on the desk before her, unable to look her old medical officer in the face.

They remained like that for a further ten minutes before Chakwas finally spoke.

"My mother always told me that whenever someone was in distress, a cup of tea would always set them right again. Illness, depression, grief or shock."

Shepard licked her lips before speaking. "I…I think I'll pass on the tea for now…but thanks."

Chakwas was silent for a moment longer. "I've never seen you like this, Shepard," she said softly. "Never. Not when you first came back from Eden Prime, your head still full of that damned Prothean beacon. Not when you fought against the Thorian back on Zhu's Hope. Not even when you came back from Virmire after leaving Williams behind."

Shepard could not recall that. She knew Ashley was gone, but somehow the exact details just weren't there. There was just a huge hole in her memory where it should have been. One minute she was confronting that…lizard creature about something called a "genophage", the next she was on her ship heading back to the Citadel. She remembered being sad. But nothing else.

So she said nothing, keeping her eyes firmly on the desk. She let herself be distracted by the light reflecting off its surface, before trailing her attention off to the side to examine the various files and holopads Chakwas had neatly tucked away. That symbol the Doctor now wore was everywhere around the room, and small versions of it adorned most of the files. It was the same symbol that she saw on the Beast's uniform. Shepard knew she recognised it, the name on the tip of her tongue, but again it just wasn't there. It wasn't a good symbol, however. She knew that much.

Certainly that Chakwas no longer seemed to be with the Alliance worried her.

"When I last saw you, you were on the Normandy as it was destroyed," Chakwas continued. "It was days before help arrived, when the _Little Bighorn_ finally picked up our emergency beacon and investigated the area. There was nothing left of the Normandy but orbital shrapnel and wreckage on Alchera. On the planet's surface temperatures could drop as low as one hundred and fifty degrees below freezing. Even if you could somehow survive atmospheric entry, and being smashed against the ground like a porcelain figurine. You were _dead_, Shepard. No one could survive that. And yet…here you are. Alive but not well. I can't even begin to guess how they did it."

Shepard remembered that. The strain of breath, the desperate kicking of her legs as she floated in that infinite emptiness, the coldness surrounding her, the brief tranquillity as her brain starved and she felt oblivion take hold of her. She remembered the voice that spoke in her head, and the Ship as it sailed like an arrow through the inky blackness and the figure of the Captain standing on the prow.

She shuddered. She remembered being pressed aboard, made a member of the crew. She remembered her durance.

Chakwas fell silent again. Shepard's tea went cold.

"I just wish I knew what happened, Shepard," the doctor said eventually. "What happened to leave you so afraid and vulnerable? Even the Reapers didn't do this to you. And the thought that there might be something worse to do this terrifies me."

"I'm fine." Commander Shepard's voice was barely a murmur.

Chakwas snorted, the sudden noise making Shepard glance up at her. "Oh please. I've been patching up soldiers longer than you've been alive, Shepard. From Shanxi to the Citadel. I know when someone is trying to bullshit me. You're not okay, Shepard. Far from it."

The sheer bluntness brought Shepard a little out of her shell, and at last she picked up her cup and sipped gingerly at the tepid liquid. It did nothing for her, but Chakwas seemed to appreciate the gesture.

"Honestly?" Shepard said at last, her voice still small. "I don't know what happened to me. Or even how to explain it. It's…it's just something I can't even speak of. It's too…" Shepard trailed off. The thing was, she was also unsure if she could even talk to her about it, for Chakwas's own safety. What Shepard had seen…

"That's alright, Shepard," Chakwas said, placing a comforting hand on Shepard's. "We don't have to talk about it now. You have a week to rest and collect yourself. I don't know much about this Fraxinus person, but he says he can help you. Cerberus assures me that I can trust him, but frankly that isn't really as much of a comfort as they seem to think…"

Shepard blinked. "Cerberus?"

"I know what you're thinking, and I agree with you entirely, but they've done everything they can to bring you back, and against all odds they succeeded. After all that, I think we can at least listen to what they have to say."

"Right." Shepard guessed it had to do with the uniforms and the symbols. "Of course."

Dr Chakwas drained the last of her tea, set her cup down to one side and let her eyes linger on the tea set for a moment, leaning against the desk and her fingers knitted together.

"You know this tea set is an antique?" she said, placing a hand on the milk jug and idly tipping it towards her, so the portrait of the woman was more visible. "Worth a fair sum of credits, or so I've been told by a collector. It was made during the 21st century to celebrate the coronation of a British king. One of the Georges, I think. Or maybe his father. It's been passed down through the Chakwas family for generations. I usually only break it out during emergencies, when Serrice Ice Brandy isn't available or else isn't appropriate."

"That's quite the conversation piece," Shepard said.

"Oh yes." Chakwas kept her hand and eyes on it. "It's nice to show off on occasion. Anderson especially loved it. Apparently he retained a tea-drinking habit from his days in London, and his mother was something of a royal enthusiast to boot. Offered to buy it from me dozens of times, the old merchant. Needless to say I left him wanting. Councillor or not, this is a Chakwas tea set, and I very much intend for it to remain that way. Perhaps I'll have it buried with me and provide an archaeological curiosity for future generations."

She finally removed herself from it. "You're not much of a tea drinker then?" she asked, pointing to the half-empty cup by Shepard's elbow.

"Not really." Shepard flashed Chakwas an apologetic smile. "Mom got me onto coffee at a young age. She used to let me have half a cup on Fridays. I hated it at first, but it made me feel grown up and sophisticated so I kept at anyway."

This brought out another chuckle. "Commander Shepard, you've _never_ been sophisticated. Don't make me mention the dancing again."

That in turn got an embarrassed groan. God, she'd nearly forgotten about her dancing. A battlefield she could weave through like a sharp knife over silk, but put her on the dancefloor…even now she still couldn't do more than idly bob on the spot and try to look as though she's doing it in time to the music.

A voice echoed in her memory, feminine, high-pitched and strangely synthetic. "Keelah_, Shepard, are trying to dance or do you just need the bathroom?_"

She wished she could remember who that was.

Suddenly there was a hiss behind her, Shepard automatically tensing and snapping her head round to see who had entered, her hand automatically reaching for a weapon at her belt. Her fingers scratched at the fabric of her pants and shirt instead. Part of her expected to see something with far too many legs for comfort to scuttle through the doors, each leg ending with a sharp metallic barb, but instead she saw the Beast from earlier. She didn't relax.

"Ah, Fraxinus," Chakwas said. "You're early."

The Beast shrugged. "I was bored. Besides, it's not like we have anything else to do around here. The rec room is pretty pathetic."

"This is a secure operational facility, not a hotel." She had adopted her grandmother tone, Shepard noted. "I trust you have everything you need?"

It was then that Shepard saw a hessian bag being clutched in one of Fraxinus's large hairy hands. He raised and jangled it, several heavy and apparently rounded objects bouncing inside. "All here. Now if you don't mind, could you leave us?"

For a moment it looked as though Chakwas was about to refuse, her jaw suddenly setting and her eyes narrowing. There was a tense moment where the two stared off, before Chakwas harrumphed and moved from her seat. Carefully, she packed the tea set away, placing each delicately in a protective container after emptying the contents into the waste disposal unit. After saying her goodbyes to Shepard, promising that she will only be next door, she left, pointedly giving Fraxinus the cold shoulder. The door hissed shut behind her, even the very noise sounding indignant.

The Beast and the Fairest were thus left alone and the two regarded each other guardedly. They did so for a while, squaring each other up, one warrior to another, one survivor to another.

After a moment Fraxinus slowly moved into the room, his eyes not leaving Shepard as he positioned himself by one of the beds and dumped the bag onto it. His bovine ears were flat against his skull, not hostile but not entirely trusting either. His stance likewise seemed guarded, as though he was keeping himself ready to snap to a defence at a moment's notice.

"You're Commander Shepard, then?" he said at last.

"And you're Fraxinus," she replied.

The minotaur grinned a little. "The one and only." The grin disappeared quickly. "Christ, I never thought they'd get you. Then again, if they did you'd have a better chance than any at getting out again." His eyes narrowed. "Unless you were _unleashed_."

It was Shepard's turn to glower. "Trust me. My Captain wasn't pleased to see me leave."

The bull actually spat at that. "_Your_ _Captain_? Is that what you call it?"

"What do you call yours?"

"A scum sucking, filthy, soulless, evil fucktard son of a bitch who's had it coming to him for far too long," Fraxinus said, the venom dripping off his words and practically burning a hole through the floor.

Very faintly, Shepard swore she could feel some sort of heat radiating off him, and from the corner of her vision, she for a brief moment fancied she saw a brief wreath of flames flicker around the Beast's form. As quickly as the sensation arrived, however, it departed the moment Fraxinus composed himself and turned to the bag he'd carried in.

"I brought these for you. Fresh out of the Hedge. They should help you get your strength back."

He upended the bag and Shepard saw several pieces of fruit fall out, of all shapes and sizes. She immediately recognised them as Hedge fruits, having seen plenty brought in from the Ship's foraging parties. At once her mouth watered and her stomach clenched; she hadn't realised how starved she'd felt until that moment, their soft smell drifting invitingly through the air to her eager nostrils.

At once she stood and all but pounced on the small pile, picking up a large hearthpeach and biting into its soft skin, groaning as the sweet juices dribbled down her chin and onto her clean shirt. She didn't care even a little. The sparkling taste of glamour from the faerie fruit was too good to ignore. Not even finished with the first, Shepard snatched up another fruit and bit into that as well, chowing down without a thought for the Beast in front of her. The glamour enriched her body and knitted her back together, restoring damage that Dr Chakwas didn't even know existed. Couldn't know existed.

Fraxinus grinned again. "And they say we Beasts are messy eaters," he muttered ruefully, before leaning back against the bed behind him and folding his arms. "Well, while you're eating let me clear a few things up for you. I'm not sure how much you remember, so I'll try to cover as much as I can.

"Basically, at some point around the time the Normandy was being destroyed, you were taken by one of the Bastards from the Other Place and dragged back to their home past the Shining Gates. You'd probably have lost a lot of yourself to the thorns in the Hedge, so if you can't remember anything it's probably that. There's ways of getting those memories back though, or most of them at least, so don't worry. From the sounds of it I think I know what caught you too, and I don't envy you for a minute in that regard. If They're Bastards, then that thing's a Royal Cunt."

Shepard knew that all too well, the memories of him making her blood run cold.

"During your time in the Other Place you've changed. You've had to if you wanted to survive, some of it is just because being in the Other Place long enough does that to you sooner or later, and no doubt the Royal Cunt had a part in it too. You're a Fairest judging from how pretty it's made you, and probably a Muse from your smell and the sound of your voice."

Fraxinus paused, rubbing the underside of his muzzle. "Actually, given what I've heard about you from before, that makes an awful lot of sense. Anyway. Somehow you managed to escape and, while I'm not sure how and I intend to find out, Cerberus managed to get wind of it. So they sent me and the witch out to track you down. I'm not going to lie; you were in a pretty bad shape when we found you. Your mind was practically gone and I was certain you were just a shell at that point. Most of this time has been spent trying to fix the damage, and wake you up from that damn dream you were having. Evidentially we succeeded."

Shepard swallowed a half-chewed lump of fruit. "And here I am," she said, feeling stronger now that she'd eaten. Much stronger. More in touch with her old self.

The bull grunted and nodded. "And here you are," he said. "Basically, as another changeling, Cerberus wants me to look after you alongside Dr Chakwas and make sure you're fit and able. That means getting you acquainted with life this side of the Hedge."

"How much is there to learn?" Shepard asked, wiping some juice from her mouth.

"Not that much, honestly. A lot of it is pretty straight forward, other things a lot less so. But it'll take more than a week to do, so you'll have to learn on the go."

Shepard frowned at that, leaning back onto one foot and folding her arms across her chest, regarding Fraxinus carefully. She had to say, that Fraxinus so far had been the only one willing to give her any useful information rose him by several pegs in her book. Most people she met tended to develop the habit of keeping her in the dark about things until they had no other choice, so that he was willing to tell her anything at all up front was refreshing. Plus he was another changeling, a mortal who had been kidnapped like she had been by Them and dragged back to what may as well have been Hell, so in him she could see a kindred spirit. That he obviously hated Them was just a bonus.

Even so. She was suspicious of his loyalties. Just why was he telling her all this?

"On the go doing what exactly? What am I even here for?"

Fraxinus waved a hand. "You'll be told all that soon enough, I guess. Besides, I'm not privy to that myself either. I'm just here to babysit you."

"And just what are you doing working for Cerberus?" Shepard asked. Even if she couldn't quite remember the basics, she remembered that Cerberus was nothing good and not to be trusted. Something about them being criminals or terrorists, maybe?

To that, the minotaur almost looked embarrassed. His ears flattened again, his nostrils flared and his eyes flicked skittishly to a distant corner of the room. "I, uh…sort of…owe them a favour of sorts? It's a really long story."

"I like long stories," Shepard said. God knew she'd heard people's life stories enough before. Apparently she had a habit of becoming really nosy about people's personal lives, and honestly Shepard did find other people's experiences fascinating so it was probably true. Why should Fraxinus be any different, then?

"This one is _really_ long and I don't really have an abridged version. Maybe another time?"

"I'll hold you to it, Fraxinus," Shepard said, resuming eating at a much more measured pace.

)O(

"So," Miranda said, observing the two figures through the scrying window in the Illusive Man's office. The image floated upon the surface of a silver bowl kept for just that purpose, crystal clear and perfectly capturing the entire conversation. "She's a…?"

"A changeling. An escapee," the Illusive Man said as he stared out of his window with his arms folded behind his back. "From a place called Arcadia, the realm of Fate and Time. And the home of the Fair Folk. Fairies, if you like, but not nearly as cute. Imagine instead spoiled, greedy, egocentric children given the powers of God. We're talking the ancient Celtic nature spirits rather than the childish pixies of Victorian nursery stories."

"Faerie," Miranda said with a nod, recalling the ancient legends of the Elf Queen, the Green Knight and the Wild Hunt. Her brow creased. "But surely you don't mean the same Arcadia that the Acanthus mages draw their power from?"

"To that we're not sure," the Illusive Man admitted, his voice thoughtful. "The way the changelings describe it is…different to the way the Acanthus do from their Awakening. We suspect that the way mages visit is different to the way that changelings are brought there. But it does present a compelling opportunity that most mages would rend reality in half for."

Miranda nodded, her eyes fixed on the form of Fraxinus, with whom she had travelled through that strange and twisted dimension of thorns and brambles. "A gateway to the Supernal Realms." It was hard to keep the awe and hunger from her voice.

"Exactly. If we can find a safe way to travel through that border realm, what Fraxinus called 'the Hedge', we may have found a way to untapped sources of power. Power without the danger of paradox. But we need more information first before we try anything." He finally turned from the window, striding back towards his chair and leaning forward against his desk. "As for Shepard, needless to say that she is no longer the same woman she was before she was taken. As her name implies, she's changed. Not just the emotional trauma, although that's bad enough. She's become half-fae herself. Mutated. Broken."

It was hard to decide whether Miranda should feel sorry for Shepard or envious, to on one hand have been kidnapped, forced to serve a strange and alien race of creatures, and then physically and spiritually twisted to suit their whims, and then on the other to have been so close to the source of all magical energy in Creation. Her mind turned to the White Tower, to the soft voice that whispered so lovingly into her ear, and to the sensation of pure, sheer _potential_ rushing through her fragile body. It was enough to make her heart almost ache with longing. Rather than contemplate further, Miranda instead brought up the holopad detailing Shepard's updated vital statistics, rapidly reading through them.

She also kept an eye on the new mission briefing, placed off to one side on the Illusive Man's desk. If nothing else, Miranda had to say that upon Awakening she's found her work a whole lot more varied.

"So how shall we proceed now?" she asked.

Slowly the Illusive Man straightened, readjusting his suit and flicking open a holographic window, scrolling through some files. "The same as always. Project Lazarus may have changed, but our original mission continues. Find those missing colonists. I strongly suspect their disappearance directly links with the Reapers, in which case any intelligence we can gather may prove vital to our future survival."

"And what of Shepard? Bringing her back was a major victory, by all accounts, but from what you've said it sounds as though she's damaged. Certainly from what we've seen, she's definitely not the same woman. It might be kinder just to mind-wipe her and send her back to the Alliance."

"She's still Commander Shepard, Miranda," the Illusive Man said, his tone not changing but still coming across as a reprimand. "That means she's the best and possibly only chance we have at stopping them. This isn't just what she's experienced, Miranda. She's _meant_ to stop the Reapers. It's her destiny. If she can't, then we have very little chance of doing so."

"Understood." Miranda straightened, her head held high. "I promise; I'll keep an eye on her."

"Both eyes. I need someone I can depend on to make sure this all goes off smoothly. If it does, this could mean a new dawn for Cerberus. And, by extension, all of Humanity."

"Yes sir."

"Operative Taylor will accompany you," he added, bringing up Jacob's dossier as he spoke and reading through it. "You two work well together, and a former Alliance marine may help Shepard feel more comfortable. It's essential we get her on our side. Do I make myself clear?"

She paused for just a moment, hesitating as she realised what being sent off now meant. "What of my lessons, sir? I'm still only a novice. There's a lot of ground I need to cover yet."

Her mentor grinned, his eyes giving it a sinister look to those who were unused to them. "You're an intelligent woman, Miranda. More than capable of tutoring yourself. I'll send you over some files to help round off your studies, but I find working magic on the field is far more helpful than anything I can offer. Just remember what I've taught you, and don't use it unless you're presented with no alternative. Never forget; as far as the crew knows, you're just a genetically engineered biotic. Make sure it stays that way."

Miranda nodded, her self-confidence boosted by that confirmation of her abilities. "I won't forget. Shall I leave for the station now?"

He nodded, moving towards his seat and sinking back into it. A small glass of whiskey materialised into existence at his arm rest, through mechanics rather than magic, and the Illusive Man swallowed it in one gulp. One foot rested over a knee, he resumed his lazy pose that Miranda so often saw him in.

"Do so. You're dismissed, Operative Lawson."

With that he waved his hand, and Miranda felt an increasingly familiar shift in the space around her…


	7. Karatea

Shepard gave Fraxinus a perplexed look.

"That's it? I just crack a joke and make them laugh?" she asked, an eyebrow arched.

Fraxinus shrugged his broad shoulders. "If you want. Heck, you could sock them in the mouth and make them angry, if you like, but I think hilarity is easier to get away with. No one can really get mad at you for trying to make them laugh."

Shepard grimaced, and glanced awkwardly towards the cluster of Cerberus operatives who had gathered around a large vending machine, casually chatting about something that she couldn't quite hear. There were four of them, three men and one woman, and two held steaming cups of something in their hands. The smell of coffee wafted faintly over on the air. Their voices were soft but not secretive; there was a work station not far nearby, so it was only conscientious of them to do so. Every now and then one of them would glance at an omnitool, although Shepard didn't think that the habit was work-related.

Around them the staff's mess hall was quiet and relatively deserted. She and Fraxinus were sat at one of the tables with cups of their own steaming away, a black coffee for Shepard and a heavily-sugared tea for Fraxinus. Most of the other operatives on the station were working or sleeping. The next meal wouldn't be for another hour and a half. Nevertheless, the smell of cooking seemed omnipresent in the air.

It reminded Shepard of pretty much every other mess hall she'd ever been in. There was even the ambiguous stain on the table that Shepard dared not identify, the same as every other table in a military cafeteria.

"I'm not really much of a joker…" she said trailing off and glancing back at her coffee, although not from a lack of self-confidence. The word _joker_ set something off in her head, a vague sense of _déjà-voux _that was becoming all too common nowadays. There was something significant about what she'd just said, but she just couldn't say what.

"You don't have to be the Presidium's next top comedian, Shepard. Even a smile will do. Just get them to do something."

The lesson was simple; how to draw glamour from people by harvesting their emotions. Initially to Shepard it sounded like sucking in parts of their soul, but according to Fraxinus it was no more dangerous than sharing someone's body-heat or a plant drawing in the carbon-dioxide from a nearby animal's breath. You just elicited some sort of emotional response in someone, and hey presto! Instant yummy glamour. Even so, the application of it just sounded outright weird.

Then again, what wasn't weird these days?

At an encouraging look from Fraxinus, Shepard gave a resigned sigh, and glanced back at the operatives. Damn it all, but since when did people ever scare her before? Sure, Shepard was never what you'd call the life of the party, but she didn't cringe from approaching strangers either. They were just a regular bunch of people having a coffee and discussing inane nonsense. What was so challenging about that?

With a bit of effort Shepard finally pushed herself to her feet, draining the last of the bitter, lumpy and lukewarm liquid in her polystyrene cup, and moving with purpose towards the gaggle of Cerberus personnel. She took a deep breath as she did so, trying to reconnect with her old officer's mentality.

Look them in the eye, stand up straight, act business-like but not aloof, breathe confidence, speak from the stomach. You're several pay-grades above them. They've more business to be scared of you than them. Use last names. Use ranks.

The conversation died down as they saw her approach, all straightening from some in-born reflex and snapping smart salutes. Former Alliance. It was evident in their bearing, the way they held themselves and the way they regarded her. A few even murmured a respectful "Commander" to her, seemingly unconscious of doing so. The singular woman didn't do these things, instead smiling a little and nodding her head respectfully. Evidentially she was a civilian through-and-through.

Out of a reflex of her own, Shepard returned the salutations smartly, waited for them to lower before she lowered her hand, and said authoritatively to the ex-marines, "At ease" as she settled into position herself.

It was the woman who spoke. "Commander Shepard, a pleasure. Nice to see you up and on your feet at last. Is there anything we can help you with?"

Shepard hesitated and licked her lips; her eyes glancing at the cups the operatives were holding and drawing from it a silver thread of inspiration. "Uh…hey, what's a martial arts sensei's favourite thing to drink?"

Everyone blinked, a couple glancing at each other with confusion. The silence in the air was laden with so much awkwardness it was offsetting the pictures hanging up in nearby rooms.

"I beg your pardon?" one asked.

Shepard took a deep breath, feeling as though she was about to jump off the high-board and into a pool she wasn't even sure had been filled yet.

"Kara-_tea_!"

There was a moment of stunned silence. Behind her, out of her field of vision, she heard a very loud, very bovine groan.

The operatives continued to stare at for a few moments more, their faces full of uncomprehending blankness, and suddenly Shepard feared that she'd done something wrong and now she was left feeling like a dork for no benefit. Her face flushed as her mind reeled, looking vainly for some way to escape and hide, when something started to seep from them and brush against her senses.

Shepard somehow managed to _taste_ something coming off them, but it never touched her tongue. Rather it was more as though she was experiencing what they were experiencing, and it did not just come across as actual emotion, but also almost like a meal as well. It tingled throughout her whole being, as though she wasn't just a tongue for emotions, but what you got when you removed everything from a tongue - the blood, the muscle, the sinew, the taste buds - until, at last, all you had was pure, uncomplicated, distilled _tongue à la Plato_.

It was a strange taste, rather muddled and wavering, as though Shepard couldn't work out whether it was sweet or sour, salty or bitter. It tasted grey and lumpy, like gruel or mushy flavourless gum, or stuffing a wad of toilet paper into her mouth and chewing down against the molars. It shuffled through the body, as though unsure where to go, before settling and spreading somewhat sheepishly through the senses.

Then, suddenly, a strangely warm, fulfilling glow spread throughout her body, down to her toes and finger tips. It left her feeling sated, energised and awake.

From it all, Shepard found herself sweating, a nervous grin spreading across her lips and her collar suddenly feeling very hot. She noticed all the eyes on her, caught between confusion and terror, and suddenly felt as though she was being pressed under a giant socially-awkward turtle.

She scratched her ankle with the toe of her boot, clearing her throat loudly. "P-pretty funny, huh guys?" she said weakly.

The same flavour again, but weaker this time, as though the source she had tapped earlier was running dry.

Whatever it was, Shepard didn't find it very appetising. However she did suddenly feel…almost satisfied, and a little sleepy. As though she had just returned from a double helping at a greasy yet very generous greasy-spoon diner, her stomach pressing against her regulation pants and her head swimming from too much fat-laden coffee. The sensation of awkwardness remained, looming, a huge wet blanket that threatened to smother her entirely if she didn't skedaddle fast.

So skedaddle she did. Fast. She could feel their collective stares at the back of her neck long afterward as she returned to the table, refusing to looking any higher than her feet. Her face burned and her eyes gazed ahead as though trying to see exactly where life went wrong. She couldn't even meet Fraxinus in the eyes as she slid back into her seat, although she knew he was staring at her incredulously from across the table.

"_Kara-tea_?" he said, his voice full of disbelief.

"Don't."

"Kara_. _Tea," he repeated.

"I said don't."

"Jesus Christ, Shepard, did you get that from a Christmas cracker or something?"

"Are you gonna cut it out, or am I going to have to make you eat your hooves?"

"Fine, fine," Fraxinus said at last. "I felt it work, though, so at least you have the idea."

"Can we just end this lesson please? I want to go find a quiet secluded corner and die, or wait for a black hole to swallow me up, or a huge foot come down from the ceiling to flatten me, or whatever the Hell comes first."

"Sure. As I said, you've got the idea. Just…for the love of humanity, don't tell jokes ever again."

It had been the third day since Shepard had awoken after her escape from…the Other Place, and Fraxinus had so far been a fairly relaxed teacher. Much of what he had to teach Shepard already knew, to some extent to another, but had to be re-evaluated to account for her knew position on that side of the Hedge. Others related to how she had to conduct herself around humans, how to interact with other Changelings - those like her who had escaped from the Other Place and made a home away from It -, and how to adjust to living within the world of Men once more.

Most importantly, he'd been teaching her how to avoid the notice of her former Keeper.

"Don't ever get complacent," Fraxinus had warned her. "Especially not now that you've just escaped its net. It's _hunting_ for you, Shepard. It will never stop hunting you down. And if you let up, even once, it _will_ drag you back kicking and screaming, along with anyone else around you who may tickle its fancy. Constant vigilance, Shepard. Don't talk to strangers. Don't sign any dotted lines. Don't follow strange lights in the dark."

That was just perfect. First pirates and mercs, then Geth, then rogue Spectres, then obstructive bureaucrats, then Reapers, then those bastards who blew up her ship, and now goddamn _fairies_ with an attitude problem. Although, Shepard was pretty much an elf herself now, however much it disturbed her to think about it.

_I still can't use a mirror or walk past the porthole windows_, she thought to herself, as she picked up her empty coffee mug and wished she had some whiskey on hand. _Real_ whiskey.

Those solid green, slanted eyes terrified her just as much as the long tapering ears and pinched angled features. To say nothing of the fact that she now had to take magic lessons from a talking, walking cow with an English accent in a Ceberus uniform, on a station held by galactic terrorists run by Hermione honest-to-God Granger as told by some horny thirteen year old with too much free time.

Shepard considered trying to sneak off and finding a quiet hole to hide in the first chance she got, but then an old urge to see this through kicked in. Cerberus _helped_ her. She owed them something, if nothing else. What's more, she had a sneaking suspicion that they know something and she was curious as to what it was. If nothing else, she could hop around and use their resources for however long it'd take for her to get into contact with someone and get back to the Alliance. Maybe even find out what happened to all her old crew. They must have survived the Normandy. They must have.

"I've still got a couple of days before Chakwas will let Cerberus send me out to do…whatever it is they want me to do," Shepard said at last, her eyes flicking up to Fraxinus. "I've been trying to get back into gear, but I don't know how ready I am."

"You're better to judge than I am regarding you physically, being Commander Shepard and all," Fraxinus said. "Although from my guess you'll probably be fighting fit by the time the week is up. Chakwas is a good medic, and you seem to be a quick healer. We won't know how well until you get into some action."

"What about…the other stuff?"

"The 'other stuff' has mostly been taken care of. The only other things I can teach you are things you'll have to do when you're not stuck on this station, where no one nearby can catch glimpse or get caught up in it. Don't worry about it. You'll pick it up. You have to."

"Or else…?"

Fraxinus didn't answer. He simply sipped his tea; a large pinky finger extended daintily and raised his eyebrows.

"My kind of training then," Shepard said nodding.

Shepard nodded and leaned back in her chair. She noticed Fraxinus suddenly look up at a space above Shepard's shoulder, Shepard twisting her head round to see what had caught his attention.

Standing slightly behind she saw Operative Lawson, dressed as always in her spandex catsuit, standing at ease behind her, wearing as always a look of distant professionalism. However her eyes still drew Shepard's irresistibly. She could see nothing really wrong or unusual about them - they were organic, perfectly shaped (maybe too perfectly) and a rather dazzling shade of blue under elegantly arching eyebrows. But somehow they seemed to _burn_ with some all-encompassing power and knowledge, like those belonging to someone who had stared into the centre of a fire until the flames and their sight had become one. They didn't just look at you. They broke you down to your component parts, analysed them, and then built them back together until they knew them better than you ever could.

It would have made her shudder, but Shepard had long grown used to such gazes, even before she was taken.

Lawson's beautifully carved face nodded slightly in a polite greeting, which Shepard returned.

"Commander Shepard," she said cordially. "I was wondering if I could have a word."

Shepard glanced at Fraxinus, who shrugged his shoulders, before standing and offering Lawson a hand. The two had never really been formally introduced, the Cerberus agent usually being kept busy in the upper-levels of the stations' administration to apparently be concerned for interaction. Maybe she'd been spoiled with all her years as a decorated war hero, military officer, and a Spectre, but Shepard felt a little snubbed by the lack of contact or explanation she'd had so far.

Lawson glanced at the hand but did not shake it. The feeling of being slighted increased.

"Operative Lawson," Shepard said, slowly retracting her hand. "I'd be glad to finally have a conversation with Cerberus about why the Hell I've been kept on this station."

"I assure you, Commander, it is not ideal for either of us. But you've needed time to recover from your past ordeals, and we've needed time to coordinate our efforts. If you would care to follow me this way?"

The Ceberus agent turned on her heels and walked with cat-like poise off towards the opposite end of the room.

Sensing no other choice in the matter, Shepard followed.

"This is a pretty nice station," she said, trying to keep the conversation going.

"It's suitable for our purposes here," Lawson said curtly.

"And that is?"

"None of your concern. Make no mistake, Shepard; you are a guest here, but you are not a part of our organisation."

"So what am I to you? A prisoner?" Shepard asked.

"An oddity. An asset. An anomaly. But maybe also a valuable ally. We shall see."

"What do you want from me?"

For the first time, Shepard saw Lawson smile. "Now that, Shepard, we _can_ tell you. Would you kindly step through this door?"

They had come to a large intersection, at the centre of which a non-descript door stood that had a white Cerberus logo and a high-clearance lock on it. Lawson activated the door with a casual wave of her hand, the lock turning green before the door slid noiselessly open on pneumatic pistons. Inside a dimly-lit room could be seen, illuminated by nothing but a line of white lights that marked out a short walkway and a single ring at the centre.

Shepard strained her eyes as she peered inside, but could see nothing else inside.

"What's in there?"

"Answers," Lawson said, her face and voice impassive. "Which, for someone always asking questions, should be all you need to want to go inside."

In spite of herself, Shepard found she couldn't disagree. So, with some caution and with some wish for a weapon, she slowly stepped into the room and was not at all surprised when the door snapped shut behind her, briefly sealing the Commander in darkness.

_Well shit_.

Secondary lights kicked in behind the primary ones, more clearly illuminating the path leading to the centre of the ring, and Shepard followed it having no where else to travel. As she did, she suddenly became aware of a strange electronic beeping, before an interconnecting grid of orange light suddenly sprang into being around her, a light that slowly travelled up and down her body as a scanner would. This was immediately followed by another flash of light and, in two parts that ascended and descended respectively that met in the middle, Shepard saw a holographic image take shape.

Throughout it all, Shepard held her ground. If she was going to die here, at least it'd be in the free air of the Waking World, and she was going to make sure she did it on her feet.

However that sentiment was unnecessary. Shepard saw that the image in question appeared to be some sort of office, observatory deck, study, or conference room - maybe a little of all of them combined - that looked out onto the massive scene of a huge, dying star, slowly using up the last of its dwindling energies. Its light would have been dazzling, blinding even, but through the special filters on the windows of the room, and reduced through the hologram, Shepard could stare at it as long as she wanted without fear. The sight was beautiful, melancholy, overwhelming, and breathtaking all at once. Before it all was a single desk and a large high-back office chair, surrounded on all sides by dozens, if not hundreds, of individual screens. Within that chair sat a man, smoke coiling draconically from his nostrils yet his face hidden entirely by shadows.

All Shepard could see were the highlights of his head, showing greying hair, his hands, one of which clutched a cigarette, and most strikingly of all, his eyes. They shone with an eerie synthetic blue light. Entirely inhuman. Small irises of electric luminescence that, strangely, reminded Shepard of Operative Lawson's, yet amplified a hundred fold.

The figure, for a moment, seemed not to notice her, instead continuing to flick through the various screens around him without pause, the cigarette occasionally disappearing into the shadows. Whenever it did, an orange glow would contrast with the blue of his eyes, briefly offering suggestion of nose, cheeks, lips and chin.

Shepard stood there, folded her arms and tilted her head. "I've seen you before," she said. "In my dream before I woke up. You were with Fraxinus."

"Well remembered, Shepard," a voice said, rich and relaxed, reminding Shepard oddly of an old uncle she once had who always stunk of cigar smoke and brandy, and who had given her four separate aunts in half as many years. "I see you're looking better too."

"Thank Chakwas for that," she said.

"I have." The figure looked up at last, the screens around him disappearing all at once, and he settled back into his seat casually, one foot rested upon the other knee.

Shepard suddenly felt a strange sensation with her thinking patterns, thoughts feeling as though they were being subtly dislodged or disturbed, as though something were brushing softly against them. Memories resurfaced, some feeling as though they'd been pulled carefully from underneath others, and, as one came free, Shepard took a sharp intake of breath as images and sounds flashed through her mind's eye.

_Fighting a rogue Spectre with countless lives at stake and no regulations to get in the way? I'd say that beats C-Sec._

Bright blue eyes set within a face, no a skull, of fangs and blue-painted plates, encased in broad-collared armour of blue and sable. A voice that rumbles and purrs, soft yet authoritative, experienced yet so naïve, driven yet so unsure.

_The Normandy combines the best of Alliance technology and turian engineering. It shows what we're capable of if we work together._

The gun smokes in the cold air, the shot perfect. The gun hisses from the heat of escaping gases, and as it does another mark falls. Shepard is impressed. The geth didn't even see it coming.

_Perfect timing, Commander. Gave me a clear shot at that bastard._

He looks at her uncertain, looking up to her for advice and direction. Shepard doesn't see an alien, a hated enemy from a war long dead. She sees another soldier, looking for guidance from a superior officer. Both of them are soldiers. Both of them want to protect their people. She tells him what she thinks, bolsters his courage with what wisdom she has to offer, shows him the path and gives him a gentle nudge down it. The renewed assurance in the turian's step makes her smile.

_I…I've never met anyone like you before, Shepard._

A name slid into her mind, tying the memories together with a mnemonic ribbon. _Garrus…_

The name rolled off her mind like a cover over a sculpture, revealing at last the nebulous shape suggested beneath it to the full light of day. How could she forget Garrus Vakarian? The turian C-Sec officer who followed her loyally through Hell and back, never complaining and never backing down? Shame filled her like a burning acid in her stomach and chest, hating herself for letting that memory sink so deep to the bottom of her mind.

It was a fine way to repay his friendship. To repay the blood and sweat his spent for her, and by extension the Alliance, against Saren and the geth.

The probing stopped and the figure nodded slowly. "You have a very jumbled mind, Shepard," he said gravely. "Someone has really messed things up in there."

"You can keep the Hell out of my head," Shepard hissed, her nerves still frayed from the sudden burst of memory and guilt.

"As you wish. I take it you know who I am?"

"The Illusive Man."

"As some call me," the Illusive Man said, with a dramatic wave of his hand. "Miss Lawson tells me you've been recovering swiftly since we found you. How are you holding up, Commander?"

"I've been better," she replied tersely. "Now cut to the chase. Why did you bring me back?"

"Unusually blunt, but not unreasonable," he said a little musingly. He was silent for a moment before continuing. "Very well. Simply put, Shepard, we need you here. While you were absent, the Reaper threat you uncovered two years ago has gone ignored, and more recently human colonists have-"

"Wait," Shepard said, stepping forward, a cold hand slipping down her back. "Did you say _two years_? Is that how long I've been gone?"

The Illusive Man blinked. "Yes, Shepard. Two years, four months and eleven days, to be precise. Have you not been told?"

"Just two years…" Shepard swore she had been in Arcadia for centuries. At least a decade. Just two years…she may even be able to live as she always did.

"I see Fraxinus failed to keep you fully updated," came the Cerberus leader's voice, only partially registered, "He's still a new addition to our team. Hopefully he'll become more thorough. Regardless, in the two years you've been gone, we've been getting disturbing reports of colonists going missing in the Attican Traverse."

Those words managed to penetrate into Shepard's mind. "Missing colonists? You mean pirates or slavers?"

"If only it were so simple." The Illusive Man adjusted a holo-board at his side and suddenly the image flickered, a series of windows blossoming across Shepard's vision detailing planets, numbers and stills from surveillance videos. "In the past seven months alone, at least four colonies have gone dark within the Traverse. Reports show no signs of what might have taken them. No bodies. No signs of combat. No signs of resistance. Blank security feeds. Nothing. Entire people just snatched from their homes without a trace."

The words sent a cold chill down Shepard's spine, her eyes flicking over the reports, seeing the statistics for herselves and the images of meals that had been left half-eaten, beds empty, and vehicles that had simply stopped in the middle of the road.

"Entire colonies?" she said.

That didn't sound like Their style…but when it came to Them, who knew?

"And any ship that may have been docked there at the time. We've been trying to piece the evidence together from what we can find at the colonies, but whenever we arrive there the trail has always gone cold, and we've so far been unable to get there before the Alliance do."

"So where do I come in?" Shepard folded her arms, and sank into a more relaxed stance.

The Illusive Man paused, regarding her carefully. "We're hoping that a woman of your unique talents may be able to assist us find a lead in our investigation. You're a woman known for getting things done, Commander, and as such we can think of few finer for the job. But that's not the only reason."

He leaned forward in his seat, steepling his hands beseechingly. "While the rest of the galaxy may be sceptical, and remain sceptical, regarding your assertions about the Reapers, rest assured Cerberus takes them very seriously. We've seen pieces of the ship that attacked the Citadel two years ago, and we know that it's no geth flagship. We've also been piecing together bits of evidence ourselves that lends credence to your claims. The Reapers exist, Shepard, and anyone who says otherwise is sticking their heads in the sand.

"The overarching aim of Cerberus is to protect Humanity, and the Reapers don't just threaten Humanity, but the entire galaxy. Trillions of lives are at stake. Thousands of years of galactic civilisation. While the Citadel and the Alliance may be content to pretend that the evidence isn't there, we're not prepared to bank our species' survival on comforting delusions."

The Illusive Man sank back into his seat, pausing to take a deep puff from his cigarette. He exhaled through his nose before continuing to speak, the smoke billowing from his nose like steam from some primitive Victorian engine.

"We have reason to believe that the disappearing colonists may be linked to the Reapers in turn. We have no proof, however, only suggestions and conjecture, and if there is a Reaper link you're the person who'd find it. Out of everyone else in the galaxy, you're the only one with any real experience regarding Reapers in capacity."

"So I'm some kind of Reaper expert?" Shepard asked incredulously.

"The only Reaper expert," he said, giving a conceding nod. "However…I won't deny your current, ah, _state_ is not of interest either. Fraxinus has proven most useful already, surprisingly so, and we're certain your already considerable talents have only been added to following your…your…"

"_Kidnapping_," Shepard suddenly spat, fear, rage and pain enveloping her. "_Enslavement. Torture_._ Rape._"

"I apologise. But remember, Shepard; we're here to serve and defend Humanity. If what took you poses a threat, then it's our solemn duty to see that they are prevented them from causing further harm."

For the first time, he actually looked genuinely concerned. "I don't know what happened to you, Shepard, I only know what little Fraxinus has been willing to tell me about the matter. And I can never truly know what it was that either of you went through back in…That Place. But I promise, if there's any way I can prevent it from happening to other people, I want to ensure I can do it."

Shepard was not sure if she believed him or not. She wanted to. She genuinely did. But talk of Them had soured her mood and made her defensive. Just as she was starting to feel like her old self again, too…

"So," the Illusive Man said, "Can I count on your support?"

Shepard was silent for a moment, casting her gaze to the corner of the room even as she cast the dice that determined where was heading.

Finally, she looked up and gave a single nod. "I'm in."

)O(

_**Codex Updated - Glamour**_

Glamour is the essence of the Fae and all matter relating to them, born of human emotion, imagination and dreams. As a being that's at least partially connected to Arcadia, the home of the Fae, all changelings require glamour in order to keep themselves going. Changelings depleted of glamour are seriously weakened, a state similar to slight malnutrition.

As well as maintaining the basic abilities all changelings are inherently capable of, such as masking themselves from mortals or entering the Hedge, glamour can also be used to power Contracts and activate fae-objects. Glamour may also be used to seal pledges to the Wyrd and make them binding, and as currency in trade.

The most common means of acquiring glamour is harvesting it from the emotions of humans, although other means include acquiring it from goblin fruits, "payment" by fulfilment of pledges, or by tearing it from fae-creatures, a process called Reaping.

_**Codex Updated - The Mask and Mien**_

In order to hide themselves from mortals, fae creatures all possess a Mask that obscures their true nature, called the Mien. Only the most powerful enchantments, mortals entered in certain pledges, children, mortals under the influence of drugs, the mad and animals can see through the Mask. Rumours exist of other mortals being able to see through the Mask after suffering some freak accident or life-altering experience, like being struck by lightning or a near-death experience, but they've not been confirmed. All fae creatures can also see through the Mask.

A changeling may burn off their Mask by purging themselves of glamour, in which case anyone may see their true form. Alternatively, they can strengthen it with glamour to hide themselves even from fae, although their shadow will always reveal their Mien.

Especially powerful changelings find it difficult to keep their true natures hidden, even from mortals. The Masks of such changelings may contain strange oddities, like a half-seen glisten to the Mask's skin, branches or horns seen from the corner of the eyes, or a strange _je ne sais quoi_ that just draws attention.


	8. Broken Silence

"So where do I begin?" Shepard asked.

The Illusive Man gave a satisfied smile and leant back a little in his chair. "We've just received a report from a nearby colony - Freedom's Progress. Its communications have gone silent. We'll need you to head there asap and try to find out what you can. See if there's any connection between it and the Reapers."

"What makes you so sure the Reapers are even involved?" Shepard had her suspicions as well, but she wanted to see what the Illusive Man was thinking. "They're looking to harvest all intelligent life, not just a few colonies."

"Hundreds of thousands of colonists have gone missing, Shepard. I think that fits the definition of harvesting." The tone in his voice sounded a little condemnatory. "Nobody's paying attention because the attacks are random, and occur in remote locations. I have no idea why the Reapers have suddenly targeted humanity. Maybe you killing one of them made them take notice."

He tilted his head dismissively to the side. "Regardless, we can't say anything until we have proof of a connection."

"And what if there is no proof?"

"Then we can go our separate ways."

Shepard somehow doubted it'd be as easy as all that, but she'd have to cross that bridge when she came to it. For now, she had an assignment, and if nothing else the mere possession of a task to do was welcome. It gave her something to do while she figured out what she planned to do next. Something to ground herself in.

The Illusive Man paused, puffing thoughtfully on his cigarette. Finally he stubbed it out on an ashtray in the armrest of his chair and fixed his gaze upon Shepard's.

"I have a shuttle already prepared to take you to Freedom's Progress. Miranda, Jacob and Fraxinus will accompany you."

Dimly Shepard recalled Operative Taylor, one of the security team aboard the station. She and he had exchanged a few words since she woke up, and the Cerberus operative seemed friendly enough, if a bit too laid back. For a moment she mused on why he in particular had been singled out to accompany her on the mission. He was a biotic, that was true, and a former marine from what he'd told her. But he wasn't the only one aboard the station…

Still, from all she'd heard and seen in the brief time she'd been aboard the station he was a capable enough soldier. Certainly capable enough that he was known personally by Operative Lawson, and had worked alongside her for quite a while during his time with Cerberus. Chances were he'd be a solid man to have in a fight.

"Understood," she said. "But I'm warning you now; I'm working _with_ you. Not _for_ you."

The Illusive Man's face did not change. "But of course, Shepard," he said. "I look forward to seeing what you uncover." A holopanel suddenly flashed to his side, and with a flick of his hand, the feed started to disintegrate with a drizzle of orange pixels.

Apparently Shepard had been dismissed. The abruptness stung a little, and she stood in indignant silence for a moment or two, before turning on her heels and storming back towards the door. It opened obligingly as she approached, Operative Lawson and Operative Taylor standing outside. Taylor was already geared up, an assault rifle and a pistol clipped to his belt and a helmet under one arm. Upon sighting Shepard he turned to face her and stood at ease.

"Commander Shepard," he said. "I'm glad that the Illusive Man has convinced you to join us."

_That_ made Shepard falter. "How did…?"

"I've just received word," Lawson said smoothly, her voice level. "We're to head to Freedom's Progress at once. I'll brief you further along the way. Fraxinus will be meeting us at the shuttle."

The complexities of interstellar communication were a relative unknown to Shepard, with respects to the exact sciences behind it. She knew, as a layman and as a military officer, that FTL communications operated by transmitting data through specialised relays scattered across Citadel space, which could get messages to anywhere within the network nearly instantaneously. Bandwidth was limited, of course, but she imagined Cerberus would have found ways around that. However from what she'd seen so far, the station was in an area of uninhabited or sparsely settled space. That meant the nearest comm buoy was probably several light years away, and meant a waiting time of at least half an hour before a message could be received.

And Shepard had been communication from a QEC. That meant Lawson could not have been eavesdropping.

So how on Earth could she have already received word that Shepard had accepted the Illusive Man's offer? Even if news had been sent via QEC itself, there should have been a couple of minutes delay. Shepard hadn't taken _that_ long to get from the QEC. Theories popped up left, right and centre in her head, from a private comm network that the Alliance and other Citadel forces somehow missed to some strange magic. The Illusive Man and Lawson both had shown signs of being more than what they appeared.

_Are they psychic_? she thought to herself. Anything was possible, lately.

"Very good," she said. "I take it you've both been fully briefed?"

"We're good to go," Jacob said, hefting his helmet. "Just waiting on you."

An old habit suddenly kicked in. "Any information on Freedom's Progress?" Shepard asked.

"Just your typical human colony," Lawson said flippantly. "Practically average in every way. At least until the abductions."

"Any idea what we'll find there?"

"Empty buildings and one big mystery."

How wonderfully cryptic. Having heard enough Shepard rolled her shoulders and looked down the corridor. "Just show me where to suit up, and then we'll leave immediately."

)O(

The shuttle was small yet fast, intended for short distance flights in between star systems. Completely sealed from the hard vacuum outside, the only sounds were the omnipresent hum of the engines and life-support, and occasional electronic beeps from the computer. Inside it was dark, and somewhat uncomfortably cold, and time was passed going over the mission briefing.

Shepard was pleased to hear that command of the operation had been deferred to her, especially because of the irritated look that passed over Lawson's face when the fact was mentioned by Taylor. Her orders to the trio were thus clear and to the point - find survivors.

"That's unlikely, Commander," Lawson said with a frown. "No one was left at the other colonies. They were completely deserted."

"There's a first time for everything. Just because we haven't found any before doesn't mean we never will," Fraxinus said, as he adjusted his armour a little. He was dressed in standard Cerberus-issue combat gear, along with an assault rifle near identical to Jacob's and a rather nasty-looking shotgun. However one weapon was clipped to his back that made Shepard raise an eyebrow - an honest-to-God _bow_ complete with a quiver full of white-fletched arrows.

Sure, she'd seen Fraxinus practise archery down in the rec-room plenty of times before, and sure he was _stupidly_ good with it, but a _bow_? In the 22nd century? What next, a mounted knight with a lance?

"Be nice to find somebody," Taylor said concurringly. "Anything's better than another ghost-town."

The rest of the journey took only another twenty minutes, the ship's onboard VI alerting the passengers to their arrival within Freedom Progress's orbit. Barely five minutes afterwards, it warned them of atmospheric entry and the squad held on tight as their small shuttle was rocked violently by the turbulence, rattling them inside like pebbles inside a bottle. To her approval, none of the others were unduly affected by the entry, weathering the violent trumbles and bucks with reflexes born from experience.

It was always good to know she didn't have to hold anybody's hand.

As soon as the shuttle moved into position to land, the side doors slid smoothly open and Shepard leapt into action. She jumped off from the shuttle onto the landing pad and immediately swung her rifle from her belt, letting it unfold into her waiting hands as she swept her gaze across the colony. It was dark, local time read that it was about late evening by the planet's clock, and a cold wind was blowing. Snow dusted the floor, light flakes still drifting from the black sky, and ice clung at the walls and railings. Shepard suddenly regretted not putting on a helmet as the wind raked icy claws against her cheek.

Fraxinus, Lawson and Jacob all moved into position next to her, rifles and pistols out as they surveyed the colony of Freedom's Progress. It was to Shepard's relief that Fraxinus had not brought out his bow, having instead elected on the assault rifle. This was not the place for antiquated weaponry.

Freedom's Progress was a rather small colony from the looks of it, encompassing a single settlement made up of colonial hab-blocks. Utilitarian structures that could be used for a variety of purposes, they stretched out from the landing pad in a sprawl that would later lay out the shape of the hub of the colony. As the colony grew and its economy and infrastructure become more developed, the habs would eventually be replaced with more permanent structures, freeing them up for use elsewhere. The colony already had a local electricity grid and it seemed as though they had started laying down roads as well. All the lights were on, and small vehicles were parked on the planned-out streets.

Were it not for the silence, Shepard could have been fooled into thinking that the colony was just sleeping. But the silence was damning. Excluding the shuttle behind her, and the faint humming of a nearby electric light, the only sound for miles around was the wind howling between empty buildings.

Shepard gestured to the others and moved slowly forward, sweeping past the first sets of buildings towards what appeared to be the first checkpoint into the colony proper from the landing bay. The buildings were mostly dedicated to regulating the bay itself; offices, storage areas and a small garage. All were empty, although the office showed signs of a small disturbance, as though someone had been disturbed and gotten up hastily from their seat. Beyond that, there was nothing to suggest what had occurred. No bodies, no signs of combat, no damage to the buildings.

Just empty chairs and mugs of ice-cold coffee left half-drunk.

Behind her Shepard suddenly heard Fraxinus snort in deeply, his muzzle tilted slightly up towards the sky and his expression contemplative. He made a puzzled noise, but otherwise said nothing.

"Fraxinus?" Shepard said. "What is it?"

He glanced towards the others, before leaning in close and murmuring softly, "There's an odd smell in the air. Never smelt anything like it before."

"What kind of smell?" Shepard asked. Fraxinus _was_ a Beast, after all. Most of them had sharp senses.

Fraxinus breathed in again, his deep nostrils drinking the cold air. An ear flicked. "Don't know. Sorry, Commander. It's too faint and there's too many other smells. Smells like something's burning up ahead, and I think something may have died beneath one of the hab-blocks a week or so ago."

"Burning?"

"Probably a fire that's been left unchecked. We should move quickly."

Shepard nodded her head and moved at once to the large bay doors that separated the area from the next section. Large and imposing, Shepard knew the doors were strong enough to withstand a direct hit from a mass-effect driven cannon round, or any attempts at forcing it open by hand. It was unlocked and opened smoothly as Shepard and her team approached.

Almost immediately a bright blue streak of light smacked into Shepard's chest, a crackling shell of blue energy manifesting to stop the round dead in its tracks and probably saving her lungs. Out of reflex Shepard followed the swiftly fading trajectory back to its source, and saw the clumsy, awkward form a LOKI mech standing on an opposite walkway. It and two others were pointing guns directly her way, sending rounds zipping through the air at sub-light speeds. They crackled as they passed Shepard's ears and thudded into the wall behind her.

Distantly, over the chasm that separated the walkways and the wind, the LOKIs could be heard coolly advising nearby users of detected hostiles and politely advising them to clear the area.

"Contact!" Lawson shouted, diving into cover. Jacob and Fraxinus quickly followed.

Skipping swiftly behind a large pile of crates herself, shots pinging assuringly off the thick casing, Shepard cursed and dropped to a knee. She was about to swing round cover quickly to fire a burst at the closest mech, when out of the corner of her eye she suddenly saw a large, hunched shape bound down the walkway towards her position.

FENRIS mechs too. Those would be trouble.

Instinct took over. Without further thought, Shepard raised her rifle and fired off short, controlled bursts towards the advancing machines, her rounds rattling neat little holes into their protective shells. Each gave small but satisfying explosions as the rounds punched through their armour and ripped their internal components to shreds. They were small security mechs, intended for maintaining order. Not for standing up against military-grade weaponry. As such they had little chance. Quickly they were robbed of life, but not of momentum, and each collapsed in a tangle of metal and plastic, skittering to a halt halfway down the walkway.

During that time the rest of Shepard's squad were already returning fire at the rest of the LOKIs, including a couple who were advancing down the walkway just behind the FENRIS. Their shots were erratic, however, and while driven by single-minded determination they proved no match for the overwhelming firepower they were up against. Certainly not the biotics Lawson and Taylor had on hand.

It barely lasted a minute, but when it was done all that remained of the assault was a load of scrap metal and twisted plastic. The last LOKI garbled out a repeated error message as its internal CPU died, and then fell silent. Shepard immediately popped her heatsink and slammed in a fresh one. It never paid to run hot during a fire fight, and now it seemed Freedom's Progress wouldn't just be a tour around an empty colony.

Operative Taylor kept his gun aimed at a fallen LOKI, watching it suspiciously as it sparked and smoked. "These mechs shouldn't have been hostile," he said, flicking his gaze for a second towards Shepard. "They should have recognised us as human."

"Someone's reprogrammed them to attack on sight," Lawson said. "We're not alone here."

"Think it might be one of the colonists?" Fraxinus's voice sounded hopeful.

"Can't say for certain," Shepard said, moving towards the door on the opposite side of the clearing. "But we should keep sharp. There'll be more up ahead."

The next hab unit seemed to be a residential block, judging by the comfortable furniture and the holo-screen on one of the walls. On a side table a lamp had been left on, flickering slightly over a discarded holo-pad. Closer inspection showed it to be a local news report. Once more there were absolutely no signs of any kind of struggle, no overturned furniture, no damage, no blood or torn clothing. Whoever had been inhabiting this structure, by all accounts, just disappeared suddenly without a trace.

As they picked over the insides, Taylor discovering a cabinet full of fresh medigel, Shepard caught Fraxinus's eye and gave him a meaningful look.

_Them_?

Fraxinus paused and glanced about the room, once again sniffing deeply. He then peered closely at the doors, the windows, even the surface of the holo-screen, as though searching for something hidden within them. Taylor shot Fraxinus a curious glance as this was ongoing, while Lawson seemed to be rather pointedly ignoring it. After a moment he turned to face her again and shook his head while shrugging his shoulders.

_Can't tell. Keep looking_.

Certain that they'd gleaned all they could from this building, the squad cleared out into the adjacent courtyard. They encountered two more mechs as they lay in stand-by mood, the quartet quickly reducing them to scrap even as they unfolded and warmed up. The sound of their gunfire echoed throughout the colony, emphasising just how dead the place was.

But someone was there, they must have been. Who else could have programmed all these mechs?

Shepard was just about to enter into the next building, when Fraxinus suddenly froze and held up his hand.

"Wait!" he hissed, his voice suddenly low. "There's something in there."

Her hand paused at the lock, glancing back over her shoulder as the Beast sniffed the air like some kind of bloodhound.

Taylor's expression was one of pure perplexity, his large brown eyes eyeing his squad-member as though he suspected he was about to howl at the moon. To be fair, he wasn't far off.

"What is it? What do you smell?" she asked, ignoring the equally concerned look Taylor gave her in turn.

Fraxinus paused, snorted again, and furrowed his brow. "Quarian-flesh," he grunted, almost feral. "This building."

)O(

So far the operation had been rather tense.

Entering the colony in the state it was in had been nothing short of unnerving for all of her team, empty and lifeless as it was. Despite encountering no signs of violence at all, Tali'Zorah vas Neema, former crew member of the _Rayya_ and the _SSV Normandy_, could not help but feel as though she was poking around in a tomb. That was all she could liken it to. Since entering the colony they hadn't encountered so much as vermin within its confines, and everything looked as though it had just been abandoned half-way through use. The very air had a dead stillness to it that made her skin crawl beneath her suit, and the _silence_ kept making her feel as though…

"No!"

Tali glanced up from her omnitool towards the huddle in the centre of the hab-block, where her squad were currently bickering over where to go next. The interjection had been Prazza's. Again.

"We have already searched that area twice over!" he said. "Both times, all we found were mechs and snow. I say we search the port!"

"But the gunshots have been coming from the port!" came the panicked voice of Jeylon. "If they're pirates or mercenaries, then we should keep as far away from as possible!"

"We could try the garage again," said a third voice. Tali believed it was Nadar. "It is a large building. Lots of places to hide."

"And run into that Ymir we saw earlier?" Prazza said disdainfully. "No. It will turn us into _klazh_."

Tali had ceased trying to get the crew to settle on a plan five minutes ago. After an hour and a half of fruitless searching, the crew had elected to decide between themselves where to search next. Not wanting to risk a small-scale mutiny, Tali relented and threw them the map they'd downloaded from the colony's central data banks. Twelve minutes later and they'd made less progress than they had before.

A part of her believed she should take control again, reassert her authority. Get the team moving and actually doing something. But Prazza was just…

She repressed a snort of frustration, her fingers tensing over the omnitool as she tried to scan the area for energy readings.

Prazza was just a _bosh'tet_! A cruel thing to say, but accurate. He'd always been hard to deal with before, yet up until now Tali had generally been able to get him to do what he needed to do. But, for some reason, he'd chosen _today_ to throw his tools out of the airlock. Suddenly every decision Tali made he had to dispute. Every task he was given he had to complain about. Every other team member he had to pick arguments with. If he wasn't so damned _useful_ when it came to a firefight or fixing weapons…

There was another loud objection - too loud this time - and Tali finally glanced up and peered at the discussion through the purple haze of her visor, past the readings on her HUD. The discussion was getting a bit out of hand. Maybe it was time for her to actually intervene and get the group to-

The door's lock suddenly flashed grin and slid open, letting in a rush of icy air and a flurry of nice. Everyone in the room snatched for their weapons, pointing them directly at the new comers.

There were four of them, all humans, and two male and two female. One of the male had dark brown skin and was dressed in a form-fitting combat suit of white, grey and black, while the other was huge, hulking and hairy. Both carried assault rifles. Of the females, one was dressed in a tight black and white catsuit and carried a single pistol, her long black hair swept past her shoulders in a large wave. The other was dressed in blue military armour and wearing a visor that obscured some of her face. Something about her made a bell ring in Tali's head however.

"Stop right there!" Prazza shouted, pointing a gun directly at the blue armoured woman's face.

Right, time to earn her rank.

Tali pushed past the group and grabbed Prazza's pistol, lowering it firmly. "Prazza!" she said. "You said you'd let _me_ handle this!"

She glanced back at the woman, about to utter an apology, when suddenly something about her clicked. "Wait…Shepard?" It couldn't be. "Y-you're alive?" It _couldn't_ be.


End file.
